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MCCLELLAN'S MILITARY CAREER 



RE.VIEWED AND EXPOSED: 



\ 



MILITARY POLICY OF THE ADMINISTEATION 



SET FOKTH AND YINDICATED. 



lington Editor If. T. 7%met. 



Published by the Union Congressional Committee. 




WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED BY LEMUEL TOWERS. 
1864. 



The fbllowing Chapters are a condensation and revioion of the series of 

tv?elve articles in review of McCIellan's Report, by William Swinto», 

published in the New York Times, dnvmg the months of February, March, 

. md Apiil, 1864. lu the peparation of this ciiticism the author has to 

acknowledge the use of a large mass of unpublished official documents. 



CONTENTS 



Pace 

I. McClellan as a Political -Strategist . S 

IL The " YouDg Napoleon " 4 

III. A Hundred and Fifty Thousand Men " in Buckram " fl 

IV. The Modern Fabius and his False Pretences 8 

v. "My Plan and Your Plan." 9 

VI. McCIellan's Grievance — the Detachment of McDowell's Corps IS 

VII. "A Pickaxe and a Spade, a Spade." 18 

"?1II. The Peninsular Campaign 18 

IX. How Pope got out of his Scrape 26 

X Closing Scenes in McCIellan's Career. 2S 






MCCLELLAFS MILITARY CAREER 



REVIEWED AND EXPOSED. 



McCLELLAN AS A POLITICAL STRATEGIST. 

It is a fact singularly characteristic of General McCIellan that having -won what- 
€ver reputation he enjoys in the field of war, he is now running on this reputatioE 
as the Presidential candidate of a party whose creed is peace and whose platform 
casts contumely on the very war of which their nominee had for upwards of a'year 
the chief conduct. When we consider, however, that all his fame is founded on 
defeats, it is not wonderful that his hopes should still be bound up in defeats. Gen- 
eral McClellan's Presidental prospects brighten just in proportion as our soldiers 
suffer disaster, and he will only be certain of being President of our country when 
it is certain' we have no country at all. 

There is no object more calculated to claim the sympathy of a generous people 
than a defeated general; and unless his failure has been associated with circum- 
stances of personal turpitude he is pretty sure, sooner or later, to receive that sym- 
pathy. Machiavelli, that subtle observer, points out that the Romans ncsver blamed 
their unsuccessful commanders, esteeming that to a high-minded man the mortifica- 
tion of defeat was of itself punishment enough. Sertorius, Mithridates and Wil- 
liam of Orange were habitually unsuccessful generals, and yet history has not chosen 
to cast contumely on their names : on the contrary, the memory of their failures is 
covered up by the remembrance of qualities of mind that deserved, if they could not 
command, success. 

It has been left for General McCIellan, however, to claim nst merely the sympa- 
thy of his countrymen (which would have been accorded him had his conduct been 
marked by the modesty of a soldier) but their admiration and highest rewards for a 
series of exploits in which the country suffered only disaster. 

General McClellan's candidacy for the Presidency does not begin with the nomir- 
nation at Chicago. While his soldiers were being struck down by thousands with 
the fevers of the Chickahominy, the fever of the White House struck him. There 
are a thousand things both in his military career and in his subsequent conduct 
that can only be explained on this theory. No doubt he would have been glad to 
have founded his Presidential pretensions on success ; but as this was not possible 
he early conceived a characteristic change of base : he determined to found them on 
defeat. He could not make failures triumphs, but he would adventure a flanking 
movement in the field of politics more bold than any he ever essayed on the field 
of war : be would throw the burden of all his failures upon an Administration which 
thwarted all his brilliant plans and ensured defeat where he had organized vic- 
tory 1 This desperate enterprise he has attempted to carry though in a document 
published a few months ago, which, under the guise of a "Report," is really an 
elaborate political manifesto. 

Had General McCIellan not been a prospective candidate for the Presidency, it 
would be difficult to bring his so called " Report" into any. known category. If it 
is less than a Report it is also more than a Report. It is less than a Report because 
numerous dispatches of the time are omitted from this collection. It is also more 
than a strictly military Report, because its basis is an elaborate historical, and 
argumentative recital, in which such dispatches as are used by General McCIellan 
are inlaid. Military Reports ia the eeose in which aoj soldier understauds the 



4 

term, are written either from the battle-field itself, or, in the impossibility of that, 
as speedily after the action as it is possible for the staff to collect the requisite data. 
There have been Generals who have seen fit at the close of their career to publish 
their dispatcher in collected form. Such a legacy was left to military history by 
the greai, Iron Duke. But what is peculiar in Wellington's publicaSion of ifis dis- 
patches is thai he has left these memorials of his career in their strict chronologi- 
cal order, in their exact origiual state: he has not suppressed a line, nor added a 
word of commentary, nor a word of argument, nor a word of acensation, nor a word 
of justification. 

Not so General MeClellan's Report The labor of a whole twelvemonth, com- 
posed in the leisure of retiracy, and after the publication of most of the material 
likely to bear on his fame, its purpose seems less to record a series of military trans- 
actions ihan to vindicate his conduct and arraign the Administration. No charg* 
ia too great, none too small, to draw out from him a replication : and he is equal- 
ly ready, whetlier to bring railing accusations against his military superiors, to 
bowl down the Committee on the Conduct of the War, or to blow up the news- 
papers. 

In this state of facts, a critical analysis of this so-called " Report " becomes a mat- 
ter which ccncerns the welfare of the country not less than the truth of history. It 
is to this task 1 propose addressing myself. It will be our duty to pierce to the his- 
torical truth underlying the veneer which General McClellan has spread over events, 
to endeavor to seize by the guiding-clue of unpublished dispatches how much here 
Bet down as original motive is really afterthought, and to examine i he foundation of 
the charges which he heaps upon the Administration, if 1 do not succeed in prov- 
ing by documentary evidence that every one of General MeClellan's failures waa 
the- result of his own conduct and character, — if I do not prove his career as a 
whole to have been a failure unmatched in military history, and if I do not fasten 
upon him conduct which in any otber country in the woi Id would have caused 
him to be court-martialed and dismissed the service, — I shall ask the reader to ac- 
cept his plea in abatement of judgment and accord him the patent of distinguished 
generalship. But if I make good all I have said; I shall ask the reader to charac- 
terize in fatting terms the conduct of a man who, receiving the heartiest support of 
the Government, the lavish confidence of the people, and the unstinted resources of 
the nation, achieves nothing but defeat, and terminates a career of unexanipled fail- 
ure by chaigiiig the blame upon an Administration whose only fault was not to bay* 
sooner to discovered his incapacity. 

IL 

THE " YOUNG NAPOLEON." 

It was the good fortune of General McClellan to come into command while tfte 
public mind was in a peculiar mood. The disastrous upshot of a forward move- 
ment in which the nation was conscious of having used too great urgencj- had given 
rise to complete abnegation of all criticism on the part of the people and the prets. 
Bull Run had educated us, and, in a fit of patriotic remorse, men renounced everj'- 
thing that might appear like pressure on the Government or the commanders of o&v 
armies. 

The nation did more : it literally threw open its arms to receive the young chief 
fthosen to lead its foremost army. He came in with no cold suspicion, but with a 
warm and generous welcome. It will always remain one of the most extraordinary 
phenomena of our extraordinary times that a young man without military experi- 
«nce, leaping from a captaincy to the highest grade in our military hierarchy, and 
bringing with him only the prestige of a series of small operations which another 
than he planned and executed,* should have been at one received into the nation's 
confidence and credited in advance with every military quality and capacity. It 
may not be very flattering to our common sense to look back at the time when this 
hero of unfought tields was taken on trust as a "young Napoleon ;" but it remain*, 
nevertheless, a piece of history; and when a few weeks after assuming command., 
be told his soldiers, " We have had our last retreat, we ha/e seen our last defeat — 
you stand by me and I'll stand by you," a too- confiding people applauded the bom- 
bast as having the true Napoleonic ring I 

Beyond a doubt these things showed the military juvenility of America ; but they 
•were none the less the manifestations of a mood of mind which an abl« Commander 

»I mean of course General Rosecrans. The Eeport of that genera], including hU operatio** tB 
'Wmtem Virginia, will, ii is hoped, soon b« published. 



could have turned to immense account. General McCIellan had but to ask, and it 

was given him — indeed it came without asking. Every energy of the Government, 
and all the resources ol a ajtnerous and patriotic people, were lavishly placed at hie 
disposal, to enable him to gather together an army and put it in the most complete 
state of efficiency, so that offensive movements might be resumed at the earliest 
possible moment. The time of that movement was, however, with a scrupuloua 
delacacy left in the hands of the Commander himself. General McCIellan com- 
plains of the "vehemence with which an immediate advance upon the enemy's 
works directly in" our front was urged by a patriotic people." I am very sur« 
that not only was no "immediate advance" urged, but that no advance at all was 
expected during any portion of the period in which General McCIellan says he was 
engaged in organizing the army. " It was necessary," says he,* " to create a new 
army for active operations an^d to expedite its organization, equipment, and the ac- 
cumulation ot the material of war, and to tlus not inconsiderable labor all my ener- 
gies for the next three months were exerted." As General McCIellan assumed com- 
mand of the army in tbe latter part of July (27th), the " three months" spoken of 
would bring us to the 1st of November. Now it would not be difficult to show that 
during no part of that period did the public show anything like " vehemence " for 
an advance. The country understood that a new army had to be organized ; in- 
deed there was if anything, a disposition to exaggerate both the time required for 
this work and its inherent difficulties; and as a large share of the fame of General 
McCIellan rests on the theory of his having " organized " the army, it may be worth 
while making a brief diversion to penetrate into the interior of this awful mystery 
of organization. 

One would suppose from the tone of General McCIellan that when he came to th« 
Army of the Potomac there was no army to command. " I found," says he (page 
44), "no army to command — a mere colleciion of regiments, cowering on the banks 
of the Potomac, some perfectly raw, others dispirited by the recent defeat." Now, 
the facts of the case are that he came into command of fifty thousand men, and they 
were vei'y far from being "a mere collection of regiments." The brigade and divi- 
sional organization existed and had existed, having been established by General 
McDowell. The organization of modern armies is a matter long ago fixed, and is 
not an affair which admits either oi invention or of innovation. The hierarchy by 
the battalion, brigade, division, and corps, first formulated in the Ordonnance du 
Roi, is the, military' system of every European nation ; and our own military code is, 
in fact, a translation of it. It is not clear, therefore, how there was room for the 
exercise of any sufli mysterious powers of organization as have been attributed to 
General McCIellan, and he certainly put forth none. He found the framework of 
brigades and divisions, and he continued it, simply piling up more brigades and 
more divisions. •)• There only remained to push the organization one step higher, 
and that step he did not take. Our regular army having always been very small, 
no highei" unit of organization than the division had existed or had been required. 
What became absolutely necessary as soon as the needs of the war created great 
armies of one or two hundred thousand men was to establish the higher fighting 
unit — the corpti d'arm&e — without which ao large army can effectively enter upon 
an active campaign. General McOlellan would never consent to the establishment of 
corps. The only novelty of oi-ganization, therefore, which it was possible for him 
to institute, he would not and did not. He left the army an acephalous agglomer- 
ation of thirteen divisions, without correlation, unity or cohesion; and it became 
necessary for the President, months afterwards, and ia opposition to General M©- 
Clellan, to constitute corps just as the army was on the point of setting out on an ac- 
tive campaign. 

The period of three months, during which General McCIellan, according to his 
own statement, was engaged in reorganizing the army, having passed, — the Goy-^^ 
ernment and the nation became naturally anxious that the splendid array of over 
a hundred and fifty thousand men, which had by this time grown up on the banks 
of the Potomac, should be turned to account Our foreign relations, our domestie 
interests, our national honor — every consideration conspired to urge an attack on the 
insolent foe who held the Capital in siege. But during no period of the six months 
succeeding the 1st of November — and during all of which period the motives for on 

*Ee|)'>rt, p. 6 

t Whatever credit is claimed for the practical organization of iba army belongs to BrigHdiet- 

General ^now Majur-duneralj Silas Caaey, a paiustakiiif; tactician, who labored with tireless a^ 

eiduiiy at the task of briga<iing the newly arrived regiments The assumption of the credit of tMs 

woTK by General M«C!leUan is a flagrant instance of sio voa nwi vobis : 

* * Tlie knight slew the boar. 

The knight had the gloire," 



advance became progi'easively more and more imperative — did or would General 
MoClellan consent to move his army. If there are any considerations that go to 
justify this delay, it is only fair to General McClelian that he shall have the benefit 
of their full weight, and this subject is worth examining with some fulness, because 
there is a close logical connexion between that long inaction and all the subseqaent 
ill fortune of the Army of the Potomac. 

III. 

A HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND MEN "IN FUCXRAM." 

There is one characteristic of General McClelian which displays itself so persist- 
ently, both in his Report and in his conduct, that it must belong to the very struc- 
ture of his intellect. "What I mean is a certain inequality of vision which puto 
facts out of all just relations, gives him one standard of judgment for himself and 
another for others, and leads him to a prodigious over-estimate of immediate, and a 
prodigious under-estimate of remote difficulties. " The first qualification in a general," 
says Napoleon, " is a cool head — that is, a head which receives just impressions, and 
estimates things and objects at their real value. Some men are so constituted as to 
see everything through a high-colored medium. Whatever knowledge, or talent, 
or courage, or other good qualities such men may possess, nature has not formed 
them for the command of armies, or the direction of great military operations." 
This key will aid us in the interpretation of that extraordinary tendency to exag- 
gerate the force of the enemy which we find him displaying at the very outset of 
his career, and which continued to grow upon him throughout its whole course. 

The first instance in which we have a distinct utterance from General McClelian 
on the point of the relative strength of his own and the enemy's force is in a letter 
addressed by him to the Secretary of War in the latter part of October, 1861.* In 
this communication he uses the following language : 

" Bo much time has passed, and the winter is approaching so rapidly, that but two coursea are 
left to the Government, viz.: to go into winter quarters, or to assume the offensive with force 
greatly inferior in numbers to the army I regarded as desirable and necessary. 

Now, the first question is, what number Ire regarded as not only "desirable " but 
" necessary," in order to enable him to assume the offensive. Happily, on this point 
we have from himself precise information, for in a subsequient part of the same com- 
munication he gives what he calls an " estimate of the requisite force for an advance 
movement by the Army of the Potomac." It is as as follows : 

" Oolumn of active operations 150,000 men, 400 guns^ 

Garrison of the city of Washington 35,000 " 40 " 

To guard the Potomac to Harper's Ferry 5,000 " 12 " 

To guard the Lower Potomac 8,000 "' 24 " 

Garrison for Baltimore and Annapolis 10,000 " 12 " 

Total efifective force required 208,000 men, 488 gun», 

or an aggregate, present and absent, of about ^240,000 men, should the losses by sickness, &c., noff 
rise to a higher per centage than at present." 

As tho strength of an army, like any other means for the accomplishment of a 
certain end, is necessarily controlled by the object to be accomplished and the re- 
sistance to be overcome, we must seek the rationale of the extraordinary estimate put 
forth by General McClelian of the militai-y force required as an indispensable condi- 
tion precedent to any offensive operations, in his calculation of the strength of the 
army which the rebels were able to confront him withal. Fortunately on this point, 
also, "We are not left in the dark, for he goes on to state that all his information 
showed that in November, 1861, " the enemy had a force on the Potomac, not less 
than 150,000 strong, well drilled and equipped, ably commanded, and strongly en- 
trenched." 

, If it be true that at any period during the fall or winter of 1861 -2, the rebels had 
"on the Potomac" an army of the strength claimed by General McClelian — an army 
■of one hundred and fifty thousand men — then we must concede that his estimate of 
the army he himself needed — namely, an effecting fighting column of the same 
strength — was not excessive, and that his reiterated demands for more men, even 
at this early period, were the result of a wise appreciation of the necessities of the 
ease. Bat if it can be shown that this rebel colossus of a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand men was a monstrous delusion, the figment of a " heat-oppressed brain," we 
shall reqiire to find other terms in which to characterize his conduct and his 
clamor. 

* Report, p. 8. 



7 

Now, I think I can show that the rebel army on the Potomac, so far from 
being of the force of 150.000 men, was never more than one-third that number. The 
battle of Bull Run was fought on the part of the rebels with a force of less than 
thirty thousand men. General Beauregard, in his official report, says: "The effec- 
tive force of all arms of the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac on that eventfal 
morning, including the garrison of Camp Pickens, did not exceed 21,833 men, and 
29 guns. The Army of the Shenandoah, (Johnston's,) ready f r action in the field, 
may be set down at 6,000 men and 20 guns, and its total strength at 8,334" 

We are then to believe that the rebel army in the interval of three months, be- 
tween the end of July and the end of October, leaped from thirty thousand men to 
ft hundred and fifty thousand 1 Credat Judceus I It is too monstrous to believe. It 
would take double the time even to brigade such a herd of men. It would indeed 
be difficult to say what the precise strength of the rebel force was during the period 
referred to, especially as it varied greatly, having attained a certain maximuia, 
then declined by the expiration of the term of service, and then commenced to as- 
cend once more when the first conscription came into force. I do not, therefore, 
attempt to do this. I merely desire to show that the swelling figures that 
Affrighted the soul of the then head of the Army of the Potomac existed only in his 
imagination, and to fix a maximum beyond which it is certain the rebel army did 
not go. 

During the autumn of 1861, while the rebel army was still at Centerville, a letter 
written from that place fell into the hands of the military authorities. The writer, 
referring to the flutter that existed in the ranks of their army in regard to the cre- 
ation of a certain number of Major Generals, tells how the Confederate Army was 
organized into brigades of four divisions each, like ours, but that they only put tw» 
brigades into a division — that is, they put eight regiments or battalions instead al 
twelve, as we have. "Now," eays the writer; "this makes quite a stir as to the 
appointment of the twelve Major Generals." This wo Id give them twenty-four 
brigades, or ninety-six regimetits. The average strength of their regiments at that 
time certainly did not exceed that of our own at the same period, 600 men ; and 
this would give them a total of 57,600 men.* 

Now. it is worthy of note that General McClellan himself, six months after the 
date of his estimate of the rebel force ''on the Potomac," at 150,000 men, gives 
another estimate made by his chief of the secret service corps on the 8th of Mttrch, 
in which the rebel troops at Manassas, Centreville, Bull Run, Upier Occoquan, aiiS 
vicinity are put down at 80,000. Note that this was after the rebel con?criptiaa 
had gone into force and had swelled the Confederate ranks with its harvestincf ; anS 
that, notwithstanding al! this, it gives a lesult less by seventy thousand than tli'e Sg- 
nre made out by General McClellan in the month of November. At one stroke the 
rebel hundred and fifty thousand in buckram had dwindled by a half! 

From all these data, I believe I am authorized in concluding that Johnston .at 
no time had on the Potomac an army of over 50,000 men. Aud it was before this eoa- 
temptible force that our magnificent army of three times its strength — no, not the 
army, but its cojnmander — stood paralyzed for eight months] Such a spectacle tbe 
history of the world never before presented. . -, 

Whether General McClellan ever really believed that he had in front of him an 

army of a hnndred and fifty thousand men, or anything like that figure, is a poiat 

which I do not) pretend to determine. f But certain it is that having fixed up©a 

- this number, all his subsequent efforts peem to have been directed, not to the. task 

"• %f destroying the enemy before him, but of forcing the Government to give him-a 

' ioommand which he could never have brought into action in any battle-field Vir- 



♦There are those, indeed, who put the rebel force on the Potomac at an even lower fi<mre Vts 
Hnrlbert, who at this time was within the rebel lines and had access to good sources of laforma- 
«''*on, says in the notes to his translatioa of the pamphlet of the Priuoe de Joinville oq the Army of 
;i05>fiie Potomao. _^ . 
. r " I hAve reason to l)elieva that when the history of the present war shall come to be writtsn 
fairly and in full, it will be found that General J.>tmston never intended to hold Manassas and Ghen- 
Vreville against any serious attack ; that his army at those points had suffered greatly during tbe 
autumn and winter of 1861-2, and that from October to March ^« neuer Jiad anemaive forasitH 
»»<w<! tAaw 40,000 wen. under his orders '' ji j •y 

t U ia possible he did, for it is astonishing the tricks which the fears ahd the fancies of a man 
inn* unhappily organized will play him; and I am willing to believe that Genera; MiClelJan 
was uulte as much deceived as deceiving It is possible General McClellan really beliened the 
..yebels had 150 OOO men on the Potomac, when they never had a third of that namber just as It 
■ , i^ ^ P"8sible lie believ d they had one hundred thousand, then two huiidre.l thousand ' then two 
- '" hundred and fifty thousand men on the I'eninsula, when the truth was they never had over 70JS0 
men— or as he believed they invaded Maryland with a hundred and eighty thousand men WBM 
their total force was fifty-five thousand. All this, I suy.is possible: but alas for the hanless m- 
»ioa whose fate was committed: to the keeping of ewcA a leader I •..<> ,(, ; .,i ., , 



ginia furnishes. From this time forth begins a series of whinings and whimperings 
for troops, the most extraordinary ever put on record. " I have not the force I 
asked for;"- "send me more troops" became the perpetual cry. These, with the 
occasional expression of his determination to " do the best he can" with what pitiful 
force he had, and to " share its fate," fvjrm the staple of every communication. 

Now, when General MeClellan was forming this heroic resolve, will any one im- 
agine how much of a force he had? He had asked for 240,000 men, from which to 
take a fighting column of 150,000. It is true, he was never able to get this number^ 
but it is peihaps worth while determining what he did get. 

It appears from the official reports that on the mo?-nini;( of the 27th October, the 
aggrpgate strength of the Army of the Potomac was 168,318 men — present for duty, 
169,452 On January 1, 1862, it was 219,707— present for duty, 191,480 On Feb- 
ruary 1, it was 222,196 — present for duty, 19?,142. Such was the pitiful bagatelle 
of a force he had under his command! He had asked for 240 000 ; he could never 
get over 222,196; and one can sympathize with his sense of ill treatment in con- 
sequence. 

We think, however, that we have read of brilliant campaigns and splendid victo- 
ries achieved with something less than two hundred and forty thousand men. If 
we recollect aright Napoleon made his first great Italian campaign with under forty 
thousand men ; fought Austeriitz with forty-five thousand and Marengo with thirty- 
five thousand; and we think we have heard that Wellington, in the whole Penin- 
sular war, never had over thirty thousand ; that Turenue more frequently com- 
manded ten thousand than fifty thousand; that Marlborough won Blenheim with 
fifty six thousand, and Ramillies with sixty thousand troops; and that Frederick 
the Great con ucted the Seven Years' War, against a coalition of more thah half of 
Europe, with an army never exceeding a hundred thousand men. But they were 
old fouies in those days, and it was left for the " Young Napoleon," who had never 
handled ten thousand troops in his life, to require double a hundred thousand to fill 
up the measure of his swelling ambition. 

In fact, the trouole was not that General MeClellan had too small a force; he had 
too large a force. He had fashioned a Frankenstein which all his power could not 
control — a sword was put into his hand which not only he was unable to wield, but 
which dragged him to the ground. 

IV. 

THE MODERN FABIUS A.ND HIS FALSE PRETENCES. 

Were it true that the army put into the hands of General McCleban, instead of 
being twice or thrice the strength of the rebel force on the Potomac, as I have 
shown, was in reality doubly outnumbered by an enemy "not less than 150,000 
strong, well drilled and equipped, ably commanded, and strongly entrenched;" the 
fact might well give us cause before passing censure on an inactivity which, how- 
ever deplorable, would still have had much to warrant it But you have seen ho\r 
this pretence has been swept away by a scrutiny of facts ; and I now proceed to 
show that the only remaining excuses he offers are equally without foundation. 
These are summed up in the following paragraph:* 

"The records of the War Department show my anxiety and efforts to assume active offensive ope- 
rations in the fall and early winter. It la only just to say, however, that the unprecedented con- 
iition of the roads and Virginia soil would have delayed an advance till February, had the dis- 
cipline, organiZMtion, and equipment of the army been as complete at tha close of tiie fall as waa 
necessary, and as I desired and labored against every impediment to make them." 

The first element enumerated is the roads and the weather, the condition of which 
General MeClellan tells us was "unprecedented." If there be any inference to be 
drawn from this expression and its context, it is that they were " unprecedentedly" 
bad, for this reason is given in excuse for not moving. Now it is true that the con- 
dition of roads of Virginia during the fall and winter of 1861- 2 was "unpreceden- 
ted," but unprecedently good — and this, happily, is not a matter in regard to which 
we are left to the unsure testimony of memory. We have cotemporary evidence 
which establishes the fact by an accumulation perfectly irrefragable. General 
Franklin f testifying under oath to this specific point, on the 26th of December, 
1861, says: "The condition of the roads is good." General Wadsworth,| on the 
•ame day says : " The roads are remarkably good — perhaps not once in tvocnty yeart 
have the rocid* at Christmas been in as good condition as they are now. Having had 

»Eeport, p. 35. . 

tKeport uu the Conduct of the War, toL 1, p. 88, 

jlbid,p. i-ift- 



this long period of drg weather, the roads are very good." So General Fitz Joha 
Porter,* in reply to a query as to the condition of the roads, says: " As far as I 
know they are in excellent condition, excellent travelling condition. " In like tnan- 
ner testified a score of officers; I need not cite their evidence, but will limit my- 
self to the testimony of a rebel witness. Pollard, f in a passage, the sting of which 
is sharpened by its justice, says: "Along, lingering, Indian summer, with roads more 
hard, and skies more beautifnl, than Virginia had seen for many a year, invited the 
enemy to advance. He steadily refused the invitation to a general action. The ad- 
vance of our lines was tolerated to Munson's Hill, within a few miles of Alexandria, 
and opportunities w<^re sought in vain by the Confederates, in heavy skirmishing, 
to engage the lines of the two armies." 

Precisely the same tendency characterizes General McClellan's estimate of the 
comparative condition as of the comparative strength of his own and the enemy's 
army. His communications of the peiiod referred to make frequent mention of the 
superior discipline, drill and equipment of the rebels, and the inferiority in these 
respects of his own force. Now it is difficult to conjecture on what basis General 
McClellaa constantly makes this assertion of the superior fightings powers of the 
rebels, unless — with a credulity insulting to the manhood of the loyal States — the 
rebel rhodomontade on this head had been swallowed entire by him. Abstractly 
considered, they ought to have been not better soldiers but worse ; for though their 
habits of life and social training had been of a kind to make them ultimately very 
excellent soldiers, they were ealcxilated to make them very inferior soldiers at the 
outset.;]: And this view of it is fortified by historical testimony; the evidence of 
all observers goes to show that previously to the organization of the permanent 
Confederate Army in April and May, 1852, and while the provisional army was still 
in existence and officers were elected by the men, nothing could exceed the laxity 
of discipline, the demoralization of temper, and the inferiority in arms, equipment, 
and transportation, that marked the rebel force in Virginia. If that force afterward 
became an army whose formidable valor and superb discipline we have too often 
found out to our cost, it is to be attributed in great part to the time General Mc- 
Clellan gave them for consolidation, and the prestige they gained by their victo- 
ries over him. 

But all comparison is superfluous ; what I say is that General McClellan's claim 
that there was anything in the discipline of his army to prevent his dealing a blow 
at the enemy before him, is a shallow makeshift that will no longer serve. If it 
had been designed to make a Prussian or an English army — a thing of pipeclay and 
pedantry, of the rattan and red tape»— there might be some force in the call for 
months or lor years, in which to perfect this painful and useless education. But for 
modern armies there is but one way ; it is, after the rudiments of tactics are ao- 
bard realities of war. It was in this way, and not by the pedantry of the martin€t 
that the armies of the Thirty Years' War, of the American Revolution, and of the 
great French Revolution, were f:)rmed. In 1813 rough German levies fought almost 
before they were drilled, and at Batitzen French recruits were victorious over the 
elaborately trained machines that formed the armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia. 
Disastrous as Bull Run was in its military results, it, beyond a doubt, did more to 
make our men soldiers than all the reviews, parades, and sham fights, with whi«h 
General McClellan amused a country whose life and national honor were all the 
while ebbing away. 

I have now exhausted the several reasons alleged by General McClellan in excuse 
for his long delay, from August, 1861, to April, 1862. I have shown that there is 
nothing in these excuses, whether drawn from the condition of the roads and the 
season, or from the sti'ength and discipline of our own army, or that of the rebels, 
to justify it. No, no! Not all the shallow devices which a year of afterthought 
can bring to the extenuation of military incapacity can either explain or exculpate 
that fatal delay which gave the rebels their best ally. Time ; which made the timid 
among us despair, and the proudest hang their heads with shame ; and whieh 
almost authorized foreign recognition of the rebellion by our seeming inability to 
put it down. 

V. 

"MY PLAN AND YOUR PLAN." 

Whether General McClellan ever would have been ready to advance on the ene- 
my, is a problem the solution of which is known only to Omniscience ; but the spell 

*Ibid. p. 171. 

tFirst year of the "War, p. 178. 

jPrJnce de Joinville on the Army of tUe Potomac, p. 101 . 



10 

was at length broken, not by the motion of McClellan, but by a word of initiative 
uttered by the President. On the 2Yth of January, 1862, Mr. Lincoln issued 'Gea- 
ei'al War Order No. 1," directing "that the 22d day of Fabruary, 1862, be the day 
for a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United States against 
the insurgeut forces.'" 

As the reason for ordering a ^'general movement" on the day indicated may not ba 
aniversally intelligible and has frequently been made a matter of wonderment by 
General McClellan'a partisans, a word on that head will not be out of place. Shortly 
after coming into command of the Army of the Potomac, General BlcClellan begao 
to urge that alLthe armies of the Union should be put under the direction of a 
"single will." In his letter of October, 1861, addressed to the Secretary of War, 
we find him urging this with the utmost emphasis, and even making it an indispen- 
sable condition of any advance by the Army of the Potomac* 

Action, on any terms, being the supreme desire of the Government, General Mc- 
Clellan was, on the Ist of November, invested with the control of the armies of 
the United States as General-in Chief. Bewilderingthough one finds the retrospect 
of such impotence of ambition as inspired this man to take on his pigmy shoulders 
ft burden which a colossus like Napoleon never attempted to bear — the task of at 
once personally directing the operation of an army of two hundred thousand men 
in an active campaign, and superintending the advance of half a dozen other ar- 
mies arrayed along a front of five or six thousand miles — it remains, nevertheless, a 
fact of history. 

Having been vested with the control of all the armies of the Republic, General 
McGlellaa conceived the plan of a simultaneous advance of all these forces — a plan, 
which considering that the several armies were, as I have said, distributed along 
a front of five or six thousand miles, with lines of operation running through differ- 
ent climate? and varying weather, was as impossible as it was puerile. At the wave 
of the baton of the mighty maestro the whole vast orchestra was to strike up. 
Until then, let all men hold there peace! In a word, we have here the first draft 
©f that famous " anaconda" strategy, which planted a dozen different armies on as 
many lines of operation, all on the exterior circumference of the rebellion, leaving 
the rebels the enormous advantage of their interior position and giving them ample 
time to fortify at every points 

And it was in view of this favorite plan of General McClellan for a simultaneous 
advance along the whole line that the above Executive order directing a "general 
laovement " on the 22d of February was issued, f 

An advance having at length been decided on, it remained to determine the line 
by which this advance should be made, being in mind the double objective of — Ist, 
the rebel army at Manassas, and 2d, the rebel capital, Richmond. 

It is quite certain that up to November General McOlellan held no other view of 
a forward movement thaii^ a direct advance on the enemy before him. At what 
time and by what counsels he altered his mind in this regard are points, on which 
,we have no information. ■ But a change of purpose had meantime taken place, and 
■when the President, four days after the promulgation of this General Order for an 
advance, issued Special War Order No. 1, directing a flanking movement on the 
rebel position at Manassas, it immediately appeared that he and General McClellan 
&ad different views in regard to the line of operatious to be. taken up. 

Against this proposition General McClellan set his face with a determination much 
stouter than the logic which he employed to support that determination. Having 
obtained permission to submit his objections to the plan, we find a long letter from 
tim addressed to the Secretary of War, under date of February o,\ in which the 
question of the comparative advantages of a movement on the enemy at Manassas, 
©r a transfer of his army to a base on the lower Chesapeake, is elaborately dsscus- 
sed. This is a problem of capital importance, and so I shall enter with soae ful- 
ness into the analysis of his reasoning — endeavoring not to omit a single point of 
any weight or value. 

At the outset of his discussion of a movement on the enemy at Manassas, by the 
rebel right flank, General McClellan makes certain admissions as to the advantages 
of such an attack, to which I call the particular attention of the 'reaper, for I 
regard them as decisive of the whole question as to the comparative advantage of 
an attack on Manassas, or a transfer of base to any point on the lower Chesapeake. 
He admits that an attack on the rebel right flank by the line of the'Occoquan would 

* Eeport. page 67. i 

t Creneral McOlellen had promised, if made Q-eneral-in- Chief, to assume the offensive before tb© 
26th of November. I need hardJy say that this promise was as little kept as all his others. 
% Eeport, pages 48-48. 



11 

•^ prevent tlie jtinction of the enemy's right with his centre," affording the oppota- 
Dity of destroying the former; would " remove the obstructions to the navigation, 
of the Potomac;" would "reduce thelenghth of wagon traneportation/' and would 
^^ strike directly at his main railway communication." 

Assuming the successful execution of this plan what would have been the result? 
Let Genei-al McClellan answer himself : ' 

" Assuming the success of this operation, and the defeat of the enemy as certain, the questioa 
at once arises as to the importance of the results gained. I think these results would be confined 
to the possession of the fisld of battle, the evacuation of the line of the upper Potomac by the ene- 
my, and the moral effect of the victory; important results, it is true, but not decisive of the war, 
aor securing the destruction of the enemy's mnin army, for he could fall back upon other positionB, 
and fight us again and again, should the condition of his troops permit." 

A tactical victory in the field, the compulsory retreat of the enemy from his cher- 
ished position, the relief the blockade of the Potomac, and the " moral effect of the 
mctory" with the losses, disasters, and demoralization that would have been inflict- 
ed on them — all of which General McClellaa admits were within his grasp, by the 
movement indicated — were surely well worth the effort. Why, considering 
what a priceless boon such a result would have been at that time, the whole nation 
would have called him blessed 1 But it would not have been " decisive of the war" 
— such was the wildly pi^rile ambition that possessed him ; and in order to end the 
war, he resolved to seek a theatre where it was perfectlj' evident beforehana and 
became a sad matter of fact afterward^ that he would find all the obstacles there 
were at Manassas with none of its advantages. 

This theatre of war was some point on the lower Chesapeake bay, either Urbana 
on the Rappahannock or Fort Monroe. The advantages of this base, according to 
Mc'Clellan's reasoning, is that "it affords the shortest possible land route to Rich- 
mond, striking directly at the heart of the enemy's power in the East," and that 
"the roads in that region are passable at all seasons of the year." 

It is on this enormous assumption that he bases the whole plan of campaign I He 
proposes to embark his troops at Alexandria, go down the Chesapeake bay, and up 
the Rappahannock to Urbana, or down to Fortress Monroe, with the view of there 
finding a passage to Richmond, where the roads would be 'passable at all seasons." 
It is hard to tell where to begin answering a statement like that. How did he know 
the roads there were " passable at all seasons? " It would certainly be natural to 
conclude, from the mere physical geography of the region, that the roads are not 
*' passable at all seasons." . We have there precisely the physical conditions to 
make impassable roads — a region on the drainage and "divides" of rivers, where 
the streams, losing their force, spread out in swamps and bogs. But if, going be- 
yond theoretical considerations, General McCIellan had taken the trouble to look at 
the map, he would have noticed, on the march of fifty miles from Urbana to Rich- 
mond, the " Dragon tSwamp," and half dozen other swamps, besides the Pamunky 
fche Mafcapony, and the Chickahominy. On the Peninsula we need not say he would 
have found ; we know what he did find. It is melailcholy to think that the fate of 
a campaign should be intrusted to a mind capable of such stupendous assumptions. 

The fact of the matter is, McCflellan's mind had already broken down before the 
problem, given him to solve, his courage had oozed out, and in this mood he was willing 
to look anywhere., anywhere away from the task before him. But it was not long be- 
fore he practically demonstrated that, in transferring his base from Washington to 
the lower Chesapeake, he merely shifted, but did not remove the difficulty. Ccelum 
non animwm mutant qwi trans mare curncnt. In running " across fche sea," indeed, 
he changed his "sky," but not the task imposed upon him. It still met him in the 
face as knotty and more knotty than before. It was with a quite prophetic con- 
sciousness of this fact that President Lincoln, on the same day as that on which 
General McCellan's letter is dated, sent to him the following note: 

Executive Mansion, Washington, February 3, 1863. 

My Dkab 8ik: You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the Aruiy of the 
Potomac. Yours to be done by the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock; to Urbana, and across land 
to ihe terminus of the railroad on the York river; mine to move directly to a point on the rail- 
road southwest of Manassas. 

If you will give satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to 
yours : 

1. Does not your plan inv"le a greatly larger expenditure of time, and money than mine ? 

2. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine? 

3. Wliereiu is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine? 

In fact, would it not be le&& valuahle in this : that it would break no great line of the enemy's 
commuaication, while mine would? 
5. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difiScult by your plan than mine ? 

Yours, triUy, AhiKAHAM LINCOLN. 

The sagacity of these queries is not less eonspicuons than the compendious com- 



12 

pletemftss with which they cover the whole ground. They were never answered? 
8imply»because they were and are unanswerable. But President Lincoln, feeling 
the weight of the maxim, that a general will do better following an inferior plan 
which is his own than a superior one which is the conception of another, and, above 
all, desirous that some move should be made, and willing to sacrifice an}' miuor coa- 
sideration to that end, allowed General McOlsllan to have his own way. 

That general and his partisans have a great deal to say about the supposed inter- 
ference on the part of the authorities 'at Washington with his plans and purposes, 
and no opportunity is lost to give currency to the notion that it was the intermed- 
dling of a species of " Aulic Couacil" at Washington which caused those failures 
which a juster criticism is compelled to lay at the door of his own military incapa- 
city. This subterfuge will no longer serve, for the evidence of his own report, when 
carefully collated, utterly explodes this claim. It is a fact worthy of note that the 
investigations of modern German historians have conclusively proved, that the vitu- 
peration which an intense partisanship cast upon the Austrian Aulic Council, and 
which has passed into and long held a place in the acceptance of historj", is itself, 
utterly without foundation, and some degree of historical justice is now done a 
body which bade fair to tnjoy a maligned immortalityok But it needs no nice his- 
tori«al criticism to show that the shallow claims of the same sort, put forth to ex- 
tenuate McCiellan's blunders, are even more baseless. If the President, as the Con- 
atitutional head of the army, is blamtable in any aspect of his dealings with that 
general, it is because he abnegated himself too much — surrendered too much of his 
own authority, and gave into the bands of an uni ried man a power little short of 
the despotic. While history will recognize that the actuating motive in this was an 
unselfish ai.d patriotic desire to leave General McClellan uHtrammeled liberty of 
action, it is questionable whether it will not at the same time condemn the Presi- 
dent's surrender of his own convictions. 

But while General McGlellan was making his preparations for the withdrawal of 
his army to Annapolis, he was saved all further trouble on this head by a movement 
on the part of the Confederates, no less startling than their retirement from their 
fortified position at Manassas and on the Potomac. 

The withdrawal of the rebels from the line of Manassas, Centreville, and the 
lower Potomac began in February, was completed on the 8th of March, and became 
Jinown to General McClellan and the Cabinet on the following day. The action 
taken by McClellan en this event was most extraordinary. In place of sending a 
light movable column to take up a prompt pursuit of the rebels, with the view of 
harassing their rear, he waited till two'days after their definite withdrawal, and then 
instituted a general movement of the whole army, not with any adequate military 
view, and with no purpose of attempting to make up with the rebels, but, as he 
says, for the purpose of giving the troops "an opportunity to gain some experience 
on the march and bivouac preparatory to the campaign " — a kind of education of 
whick, truly, they stood in great need.* 

To any commander not hopelessly wedded to a preconceived idea, the withdrawal 
of the rebels from Manassas behind the Rapidau, befoie a single man had been 
shipped for the new base, would have suggested the wisdom and eveu the neeessity 
of a change of plan. ^Airthe conditions under which the purpose of a transfer of 
the army to Urbana or the Peninsula was formed were changed by that event. The 
cardinal conception in making a flank movement by water was the hope which 
General McClellan entertained of being able to reach a point on the line of retreat 
of the rebels or to reach the front of Richmond before they could* — circumstances 
ander which they would doubtless have given battle with great disadvantage^ 

The move of the enemy ought to have suggested to General McClellan that, 
whatever their purpose was, it was next to certain that they would be in force to 
meet him at whatever point of the coast he might choose to land. It should have 
ssggested to him that all opportunity of making an offensive martceuvre was now 
at end, and that all he could now hope to do was to make a transfer of base. 
It suggested to him none of these things. It fifnply suggested to him to change 
the proposed coast expedition. To make Urbana, on the Rappahannock, after the 
rebels had retired behind that river, was out of the question, for if he might hope, 
ander cover of the navy, to effect a landing, it would certainly not be possible for 
him to debouch from his point of debarkation. Under these circumstances the line 

* The Prince de Joinville calls this movement to Manassas and back again '' a promenaiie" — a 
g<>od name for it, but the most senseless and aimless " promenade " ever conceived bv a general 
in the midst of actual war The '■ promt- nade " gave the soldiers an opporrunity of seemg for 
tbeoaselves the pitiful obstacles of quaker g:uns and one-borto unarmed earthworks that had so 
long alrighted the soul of their general, though the experience we are sure, did not come hom» 
to those brave men without profound mortiflcation and disgu^. 



13 

of the PeninsTila — whicb he had before spoken of as one promising " less celerity 
and brilliancy of result," and only to be adopted in case "the worst came to the 
worst " — remained ; and this he immediately chose. 

But I shall show that this decision was made under circumstances that broujBjht 
him into direct conflict with the President's most explicit orders touching the safety 
of Washington, and in palpable and most inexplicable violation of the conditions 
which the council of corps commanders adjudged essential to any movement by the 
line of the Peninsula. I shall further show that this decision forms the initiskl 
point of all his subsequent disasters in that hapless campaign. 

'VI. 

MoCLELLAN'S GRIEVANCE— THE DETACHMENT OF McDO WELL'S CORPa 

While Mr. Lincoln was disposed to waive his judgment with regard to the stra- 
tegic merits of the two plans of advance on the enemy, he by no means felt at liber- 
ty to permit Geaeral McClellan to proceed in the execution of his movement by 
water without placing him under such conditions as should remove as much as pos- 
sible the danger of an assault uppn the capital by the enemy. And yet even here 
he did not undertake to decide as a military man, upon the force which might be 
necessary for the safety of Washington, but referred that' question to the concurrent 
opinion of General McClellan and the four Generals in command of the four army 
eorps into which the Army of the Potomac had been divided, simply stipulating 
that no change of base of the Army of the Potomac should be made without 
leaving such a force in and about Washington as should leave the Capital entirely 
secure, not merely in the opinion of General McClellan himself, but in the opinion 
also of all the faur Generals in command of the four army corps constituting the 
army.^ This obliged him to hold a conference M'ith these commanders, in the 
<joar8e of which they consented to the proposed movement by the Peninsula on cer- 
tain specific conditions, to which I invite the particular attention of the reader. 
They are as follows — to wit: 

1st. That the enemy's vessel ^«rriraac can be neutralized. 

2d. That the means of transportation. suflScient for an immediate transfer of tbe force to its new 
base, can be ready at Washinglonand Alexandria to move down the Potomac ; and 

8. That a naval auxiliary force can be had to silence, or aid in silencing, the enemy's batteries 
on York Kiver. 

9th. That the force be left to cover "Washington shall be such as to give an entire feeling of seca- 
rity for its safety from menace. (Unanimous.) 

II. If ihe foregoing cannot be, the army should then be moved against the enemy, behind the 
Eappahannociv, at the earliest possible moment, and the means for consu-ucting bridges, repairing 
railroads and stocliing them with materials sufficient for supplying the army, should at once be 
collected for both the Orange and Alexandria and Aquia and Bichmoud Kailroads. (Unanimous.) 

N, B. That with the forts on the right bank of the Potomac fully garrisoned, and those on the 
feft bank occupied, « coveringforce, in frontofthe Virginialineof 25,000 men wouldsuffice. (Keyea, 
HeiQtzelman and McDowell.) A total of. 40,000 men lor the detence of the city would sufiSce. 
(Sumner.) 

In the interpretation of these opinions of the corps commanders, it must neces- 
sarily be supposed that the three Generals who concurred in opinion, intended that 
all the fortifications around Washington should be " manned " or " occrpied," and 
that, over and above this, thtre should be a distinct unit of force capable of being 
moved, of twenty-five thousand men. As three of the Generals concurred in this 
opinion the opinion of the fourth may be thrown out of view, although it is not cer- 
tain whether his opinion was intended to apply to a movable force over and above 
the garrisons, or' to include the garrisons in his estimates of forty thousand men. 

It is evident that the opinion of the three agreeing Generals was for McClellan 
the regulatins" opinion, with which he was bound to comply in carrying out the 
iwder of the President. 

Now it is remarkable that, in October, when he contemplated a forward move- 
ment, he estimated the force necessary to be left in and about ^"'ashingtoa, at thirty- 
five thousand men ; arid this, be it observed, when the proposed movement contem- 
plated the presence of the main body of the army in front of the Capital, available 
in its protection and defence. If this force of thirty- five thousand men, was deemed 
necessary by General McClellan, as the proper garrison of Washington, when the 
-whole army was expected to be engaged in front of the Capital, much more would 
this force be necessary when the proposed movement loo'ired to the removal of the 
main body of the army to the Peninsula, far beyond the possibility of being imme- 

* President's General War No. 3, Report, p. 53. 



14 

iiately available for the defence of Washington, should the movements of the enemy 

endanger the Capital. 

The conclusion is irresistible, therefore, that General McClellan was bound by the 
President's order to leave, as the garrison of the forts around Washington, not less 
than thirty-five thousand men ; and over and above this a movable unit of force, 
or, in other words, an army of twenty-five thousacd men, without taking into con- 
sideration the troops necessary for the defence of Baltimore or Harper's Ferry, or 
the guards along the Potomac, both above and below Washington; for the garri- 
sons necessary for these places were all estimated for separately in his report of 
October, 1861. 

It is plain from this statement, the verity of which is matter of oflScial record, that 
when General McClellan received the order of the 8th of March, and had obtained 
the opinion of the four Generals, as just stated, his first duly was to comply with thi 
President' s order as a condition prior to issuing any order himsdf in furtherance of 
his plan of a campaign on the Peninsula. He should first have designated the 
troops necessary for the security of Washington, not according to his own individ- 
ual judgment, but in conformity with the opinions of the four Generals, or of the 
three which concurred in opinion. His nest point of duty was to consider whether 
his remaining force, after deducting the force designated for the security of Wash- 
ington, would be such as to justify him m undertaking a campaign by his proposed 
line : and if he thought it was not, it was his plain duty to represent the case to the 
President before giving any orders, having in view his proposed campaign. 

If General McClellan had taken this course, which both candor and duty required, 
he would have been spared the painful position of being in the wrong in the con- 
flict which ensued, consequent on the necessity which his conduct had devolved 
upon the President, of making good his own orders, after General McClellan. left 
Washington for the Peninsula, for it was not until after his departure that the Pres- 
ident became acquainted with the fact that, should McClellan's orders be carried 
out, his own express orders-would be disobeyed : that is, Washington, or the fortifi- 
cations around it, would not be manned as required, in the opinion of the three 
Generals, nor would there be a covering army of twenty-five thousand men, as 
required by the same opinion. On the contrary, it was discovered that the amount 
of force left in and about Washington, and in Front of it, at Warrenton and at other 
points, /eZ^ short of twenty thousand men, most of them being new troops, and though 
not disorganized, they were by no means organized, as was clearly set forth in offi- 
cial statements, and the force fell short numerically of that which he was required 
to leave by some forty thousand men !* 

Not, as I have said, till aft<ir General McClellan's departure did the consequence 
of his difiingenuous'conduct, which left the Capital of the nation in a condition 
almost to be taken by a single coup de mai?i, become apparent. It then became 
the President's inaperative duty to take measures to secure the end which General 
McClellan had so grossly neglected, and he did so in the following order : 

Adjutant-Gteneeal's Office, April 4, 1862. 
By direction of the President, General McDowell's army corps has been detached from the 
force under your immediate command, and tlie General is ordered to report to the Secretary 
of War. Letter by mail. 

L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General. 
General McClellan. 

If the exposition already given has the force and the truth, and the force of 
truth which I think belong to it, it will have been made app^^rent that it was 
General McClellan's own neglect of the command of the President, embodying 
the opinions of the Corps Commanders, that drew upon him the consequences, 
whatever they were, of the above order for the detention of McDowell's Corps — 
an order which was issued for no other reason than because General McClellan had 
failed in his duty, and thereby, in the judgment of all men, the facts being 
known, was precluded from all right of comment upon the President's order, and 
he himself must be held responsible for whatever consequences resulted from that 
order. 

I state this simply to establish the principle in the case; but I shall, in the 
sequel, demonstrate that the consequences of McDowell's detention were by no 
means as important as General McClellan is disposed to allege, because, of the three 
divisions of McDowell's Corps Franklin's was sent to him immediately, and McCall's 

* If General McClellan made the fiiU and fair report of all the transaitions of this period which a 
decent respect lor the truth of history demands, he would have inserted at this point the report the 
General Wadsworth, Military Governor of Washington, on the strength and condition of the force 
left lor the defence of the Capital — a document which was certainly accessible to him. It will be 
found at p. 816 (Vol. 1) of the Keport on the Conduct of the War. 



15 

ia ample time to participate in the battles-before Richmond; I shall demonstrate 
that, had McDowel's entire Corps been sent to him at the time that Franklin's di-' 
vision was forwarded, General McClellan could have made no use of it, for reasoM 
which will appear at the proper time; and I shall demonstrate that McDowells' 
force at Fredericksburgh was quite as useful to General McClellan as it would have 
been if sent to him, since its presence threatening Richmond called off an equal por- 
tion of the enemy's force, which he would otherwise have had in hia front. 

Another point must here be explained, having some connection in General M<J- 
Clellan's mind, with the action of the President in the detention of McDoweU'ii 
Corps, and it is this: There was among the troops in front of Washington, consti- 
tuting a portion of the Army of the Potomac, a dvision of about eleven thousand' 
meu,'under the command of General Blenker. Shortly before the departure of Gen- 
eral McClellan for the Peninsula, the President had a personal interview with hiia, 
in which he expressed his desire to send that division to what was called the Moun- 
tain Department, in-Middle Virginia, with the view of enabling General Fremont to 
move a co-operating column in conjunction with the advance of the army of tba 
Potomac. General McClellan was opposed to the movement of that division, but. 
finally acquiesced in it. In his allusion to this interview with the President, Gen- 
eral McClellan states that the President assured him no further reduction of hiri 
army destined for the Peninsula should be made; and he then refers to the order 
detaining McDowell's Corps as a violation of the expressed promise made by this 
President, ,j , 

"The President," eays he, "having promised, in an Interview following his order of March &.., 
withdrawing Blenker's division of 10,000 men from my command, that nothing of the sort should 
be repeated— that I might rest assured that the campaign should proceed, with no further deduc- 
tiona from the forcn upon which Its operations had been planned, I may confess to havmg 06m\ 
shoc&ed at this order," etc.* 

In this " fine frenzy " there is a sad want of ingenuous statement; for General Me-. 
Clellan knew, he could not but have known, that the promise referred to must have 
been made by the President, with the implicit understanding that his own. order* 
touching the Security of Washington would he carried out. The President placed too 
much leliaiice upon General McClellan's sense of duty and propriety t« intimate 
a doubt as to bis faithful obedience to his very pointed and written orders, looking 
to the security of the capital. Under these circumstances General McClellan had 
no right to appeal to the promise of the President, except in terms of humility for 
the attempt to practice a deception upon the high functionary who made it, whose 
relations to the Commander of the S^rmy of the Potomac was necessarily of so con- 
fidential a character as to make the utmost candor on the part of the subordinate' 
a duty of the first importance ; for it cannot be expected of the Chief Magistrate of 
a great people to watch with jealous suspicion the chief oSicers in command of his 
armies, lest they should deal covertly with him in their execution of his proper or- 
ders. If an evasion of duty is an offence of the most shameful character in any 
subordinate towards his superior, utterly subversive of all discipline in an armyj 
and destructive of its efficiency, much more is this a crime of the first magnitud*' 
in a general officer, on whose unity of action with the purposes of his superior th** 
success of an army almost entirely depends. , 

I now proceed to the consideration of the other condition, the fulfillment of 
which was, in the opinion of the Corps Commanders, an essential prior to any move- 
ment by the line of the Peninsula. It is the following terms, to wit: "That the 
enemy's vessel, the Merrimac, can be nutralized." On this point the opinion of 
the Corps Commanders was unanimous. 

It is hardly conceivable how General McClellan could disregard the warning of 
his four Generals on this point, and undertake his expedition in spite of the know- 
ledge which he must himself have had of the power of the Merrimac f _ It is true 
that General McClellan drew from Commodore Goldsborough a declaration that he 
could neutralize the Merrimac. But this opinion went no further, as Genercl Me- 
Glellan ought to have known, that an assurance that, with the aid of the Monitor, 
and of his other navnl vessels, he could prevent the Merrimac from leaving Eliza- 
beth River, or, at all events, prevent her passing by Fortress Monroe into Chesa- 
peake Bay. 

But in order to do this, that is, in order to "neutralize " the Merrimac, General 
McClellan must have known that the power of Gommodore Goldsborough was itself 
neutralized by Ihe Merrimac ; so that it was impossible for the navy at Fortress Mon- 

* Report p. 56. 

t The wrliieu instructions of the confederate navy department to the commanders of th« 
Merrimac show that he was under orders to pass out bejond Fortress Monroe and destroy Mo- 
C'ieUan's water transportation. in Chesapeake iS ay. 



16 

roe to give General McClellan any effectual aid, either on the James or York rivers, 
the presence of the navy, as just intimated, being necessary to watch the Merrimac. 
It is important to understand fully this state of things, because General McGlellaD 
complains, in his Report, of the want of assistance from the navy, when, in point of 
fact, he had no right to count upon it, and would have had no right even if his four 
Generals. had not warned him of the dangerous power of the Merrimac. The navy 
was doing all it possibly could do in covering his water line of commuuieations, and 
had no force left with which to perform any other work. This he ought to have 
known and no doubt he did know it, and hence I say his complaints on this head 
are not ingenous. They are the resort and the afterthought of a defeated General, 
whose failure was due to himself; but who has sought in this so-called " Report " 
to throw the responsibility upon others. 

The result of this reasoning is, I think, to show that not one of the conditions 
defined by the council of Corps Commanders as essentials, prior to the adoption of 
the Peninsula route, was complied with by General McClellan. He neither left 
Washington secure, nor secured the neutralization of the Merrimac, nor secured 
the eo-operation of the navy. In absence of these requirements, his plain duty was 
the adoption of the other alternative agreed upon by the Corps Commanders in the 
following terms: "If theforegoing cannot be, the army should then be moved against 
the enemy behind the Rappahannoch at the earliest possible moment." But this Gen- 
eral McClellan did not do. He had determined to move the army to the Peninsula, 
and in doing so, he took upon himself the responsibility of all the results that grew 
out of his disobedience of orders. 

Yet you will presently see him turning round and with incredible effrontery 
charging bad faith and the blame of his failures on those he had thus grossly de- 
ceived. And from that day to this he and his following have made the withholding 
of McDowell's corps his great grievance — the gravamen of all their charges against 
the Administration — the convenient pack-horse on which to place that burden of 
defeat that will bear him down to a historic infamy I 

VII. 
"A PICKAXE AND A SPADE, ASPADEf"^ 

There is now, I suppose, not the shadow of a doubt that had the Army of the 
Potomac been simply allowed to walk on up the Peninsula, it would have been able 
to walk over all the force which General Magruder had to oppose it. It is now kriovrn 
how contemptible that force was. General Magruder's official report* of his opera- 
tions on the Peainsula shows that his whole army consisted of eleven thousand 
men ; of these, six thsusand were useless to him, being placed in garrison at Glou- 
cester Po^nt, Mulberry Island, etc. "So that it will be seen," adds he, " that the 
balance of the line, embracing a length of thirteen miles, was defended by about 
^ve thousand men." What is now a matter of certainty was then a matter of 
shrewd conjecture. Genei-al Wool, whose position at Fortress Monroe gave him 
every possible information regarding the enemy, repeatedly represented to General 
McClellan how trifling the rebel force was and begged him to push on before the rebels 
should have time to concentrate. Disposing his feeble force with admirable skill, 
moving it about from point to point, and putting forth the wiles and strategems of 
war he succeeded in so frightening General McClellan that, after a single reconnois- 
sance, he sat down to — dig. '-To my utter surprise," says General Magruder, "he 
permitted day after day to elapse without an assault. In a few days the object of 
hia delay was apparent. In evei'y direction, in front of our lines, through the in- 
tervening woods, and along the open fields, earthworks began to appear." Of simi- 
lar tenor is the conversation reported by Col. Fremantle, of the Coldstream Guards, 
who met General Magruder in Texas. last sumner.f "He (Magruder) told me," he 
says, "the different dodges he had resorted to, to blind and deceive McClellan as to 
his strength ; and he spoke of the intense relief and amusement with which he at 
length saw that General, with his magnificent army, begin to break ground before 
miserable earthworks defended only by 8,000 fnen." 

Grimly amusing though the retrospect of such a spectacle is, it involves 
a great deal that is much too humiliating to permit our entirely appreciating 
it. Shirking the duty of moving on the rebels at Manassas, General McClellan 
sought the Peninsula with the express view of making a "rapid and brilliani" cam- 
paign. His first measure in execution of this campaign is to sit down before the 

* Confederate Keporta of Battles, page 55T. t Three Months in the Southern Statts. 



17 

five thousand rebels present to dispute his progress. All that can possibly save this 
from being hereafter esteemed a bit of monstrous burlesque, is that it is vouched for 
by the irrefragable evidence of history ! 

If the defensive Hoe which the rebels had constructed across the Isthmus, from 
Yorktown along the line of the Warwick, was really a position of the enormous 
strength claimed by General McClellan, I can only say that he ehould have taken 
this element into account when he determined on his plan of campaign. It is a 
lame and impotant excuse for him to put forth that he did not know the rebels had 
a fortified position on the Peninsula, that he was wholly ignorant of the nature of 
the topography, that he was not aware that the Warwick river ran in the direction 
it does, and th^t he found the roa^ in a horrible condition. He was repeatedly 
forewarned that he would find fortifications on the Peninsula jnst as well as at Ma- 
nassas ; but with that extraordinary levity of mind that characterizes him, he in- 
sisted on seeing all rose colored in" the distance, and, exemplifying perfectly the 
Latin saying, Oinne ignotum pro magnijico, the less he knew of the nature of the 
theatre of war he was about to seek (and he after confessed it was an unknown re- 
gioa to him) the more allurements it had for him. 

But without denyieg that the position which the rebels held aci-oss the Isthmus 
was one naturally strong, I deny utterly and altogether that that it presented 
anything which need have been any considerable obstacle to the advance of the 
overwhelming numbers of the Army of the Potomac. The line held by the rebels 
— the general line of the Warwick, which heads within a mile of Yorktown — waa 
defended by a series of detached redoubts connected by rifle-pits, and it was not less 
than thirteen miles in extent. Now, all experience proves that a line so extended 
is only formidable when the works are fully manned, and there is present, beside, 
a moveable force, capable of rapid concentration at any point the enemy may assail. 
The very length of such a line becomes its weakness ; there must be some point at 
which it can be forced; and this, once done, the works become a disadvantage, 
rather than a defence.* ' 

On the point of the absolute necessity devolving upon McClellan to assault the 
works at Yorktown, the moment he reached and reconnoitered them, there is, in- 
deed, no room for argument. Any one who will inspect the map will see the read- 
iness with which the line of the Warwick might have been forced, and, this onc« 
done, Yorktown was turned. And this is the proper place to mention an incident 
touching the true details of which General McClellan is as reticent as he always is 
touching anything which in the smallest degree tells against himself. One of th** 
division commanders occupying a point where he knew he could force the enemy's 
line, sent a portion of his command, chiefly Vermont troops, to cross a dam which 
the rebels had constructed, and assault their position. This they did, and gallant- 
ly advancing under heavy fire, actually took possession of the rebel works. But 
this was all contrary to General MeClellan's favorite system of regular approaches, 
and would have proved that the President's recommendation to pierce the enemy's 
line, instead of being "simple folly," as McClellan pronounced it, was the highest 
wisdom. It must have been for this reason-^for there is no other to be found — that 
the brave fellows who had been guilty of this brilliant irregularity, were left utter- 
ly without support, and were finally forced to fall back with serious loss! I sup- 
pose there is but one man in the world who will not now admit that the " folly " 
in the siege of Yorktown rested, as it so often does, exclusively where the timidity 
belonged — and that man is General McClellan. And if it will add anything to the 
completeness of this demonstration to say that the rebels never expected to hold 
Yorktown, we have their own testimony to that effect. Mugruder rightly describes 
the impression General MeClellan's conduct produced when he speaks of the "in- 
tense amusement and delight with which, he at length saw that general begin to 
break ground before miserable earthworks defended by a feeble force of eight thou- 
sand men." 

But if the rebel force was feeble at the outset and not in condition to offer any 
serious resistance to an even moderately vigorous attack, it was quite certain that 
it would not long be allowed to remain so. The enemy, finding unexpectedly that 
they could hold the Army of the Potomac in cheek until a secondary defensive 
line nearer Richmond could be prepared, would have shown an inbecility which 
they have never dL-^played, had they not done so. The high probability that they 

♦ Military history presents no more formidable fortified lines than those of Mehaigne and Bou- 
chain, and yet Marlborough forced these, though defended by a superior force; and if this could 
be done in the case .if positions held by a superior force, what shall we say of a line held by 
five thousand against over a hundred thousaud. The comparison, in fact, is as ludicrous as it 
would be to compare' the one general with the other— I mean, of course, a MarlborouaU 
With a Mculellan. 



18 

would both reason and act in this way seems, to have been duly appreciated by the 
President, who communicated this impression to General McClellan in nnmeroa^ 
dispatches, of which the following of Apiil 6th, is a sample : ''You now have over 
one hundt'ed thou.-^and troops with you, independently of General Wool's of)mm.and. 
I thiuk vou had better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick river at 
once. They will probably use time a> alvantageously you can." So again, three 
days afterward: " By delay, the enerny will relatively gain upon you; that is, he 
will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements, than you can by reinforcements 
alone " Never was utterance more prophetic ; for, says General Mai^ruder, in his 
official report: "Through the energetic action of the (Confederate) goveramcnt, re- 
inforcement began to pour in, and each hour the Army of the Peninsula (jrew 
stronger .and stronger until anxiety passed from my mind as to the result of an attack 
upon us." With these facts, it is submitted to the reader whether we are not justi- 
fied in connecting by the closest logical bond of antecedent and consequent this fa- 
tal delay and all the disastrous results of the campaign on the Peninsula? 

At length, after a month of delay, the rebels, whether ashamed of themselves at 
putting the grand Army of the Potomac to such unnecessary trouble, or because the 
position of McDoweU'eorps at Fredericksburg became too serious a menace to Rich- 
mond, withdrew from Yorktown as secretly as they had withdrawn from Manassas. 
General McClellan had comsumed many weeks, including the whole month of April, 
in preparing to breach the fort at Yorktown. It is impossible to saj' how many 
weeks more he would have gone on digging and hauling, and it is a matter of record 
that he had just sent a request that the heavy siege guns in the fortifications for the 
defence of Washington should be taken out of their works and shipped to him, when, 
at length, the day after the withdrawal of the rebels, he " discovered " they had 
gone! Coming into possession of the deserted position, he immediately asked if he 
might inscribe "Yorktown " on his banners, and telegraphed a dispatch which he 
has forgotten to reproduce, to the effect that he would " push the enemy to the 
wall." [ need hirlly remark that thij •' will" was never found; aad we were 
left to exclaim with Pyramus : 

"Thou wall! 0, wall! O, sweet and lovely wall, 
Show me thy chinii to Ijlink through with mine eyne." 

We shall prei=ently follow General McClellan in his subsequent movements on the 
Peninsula; but before dismissing the consideration of the siege of Yorktown, we 
must remark, in a word, that we find ourselves unable to accord to that siege the 
admiration which General McClellan challenges for it. We are requested to admire 
the thirty or forty miles of corduroy road constructed by his army, the miles of 
trenches and rifle pits opened, and the huge batteries placed, none of which, by the 
way, was ever allowed to open its fire. But we could admire the corduroy road 
more, were it not, according to General McClellan's own statement, a mere piece of 
supererogation-;— ! he roads in that region being *^ passable at all seasons of the year." 
We ci>uld admire the colossal digging and delving more, could we shut out the 
ghastly vision of the thousands of lives lost by the epidemics of th« region into 
which our army had been led and the useless servitude to which it had been con- 
demned, or push aside the spectacle of those brave fellows digging at once a double 
ditch — a grave as well as a trench. We conld admire more the profiles of his bas- 
tions and his batteries, did thej' not irresistibly present themselves to our imagina- 
tion as huge monuments of the folly of a man who, seeking the Peninsula to exe- 
cute a strategically offensive^campaign, sat down, at the first show of resistance, to 
a feeble tactical defensive. 

VIII. 

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 

It now stands historically determined that at the time the Army of the Potomac 
landed upon the Peninsula, the rebel cause had reached its lowest ebb The splen- 
did victories won by the Union armies in the West — armies whose ardor even the 
McClellan policy, while it ruled, had not been able to restrain, and which, when 
once freed from that ineubus, sprang forth into glo«ious activity — had cariied dis- 
comfiture and demoralization to the rebel ranks, terror and dismay to the whole 
popula'ion, and fearful forebodings to the souls of the guilt}' leaders. 

And while this was true of the rebel cause and the rebel armies generally, these 
influences were also powerfully felt by the rebel army in Virginia. It must 
be remembered that this was befoi-e the passage even of the first Conscription Act, 
and while the rebel army was suffering from the excessively defective military sjs- 



19 

tem under which the "Provisional Army" was organized. Its "Winter at Manas- 
sas had greatly reduced it by disease and expiration of the term of service of the 
one year troops, and there is the best evidence to show that it effected its with- 
drawal from Manassas and Centreville in a condition of very great demoralization. 
Under these circumstances, there is hardly the shadow of a doubt that, had the 
rebels been pi'omptly followed up after their retreat behind the Rappahannock, our 
army would have entered Richmond on the heels of a routed and dissolving mob, 
and taken possession of the Capital which the rebel leaders then espseted to 
abandon. 

In this state of facts, the historian finds himself brought face to face with the 
puzzling problem of determining how it happens that, in the words of Gen. Barnaed, 
(see Report of Engineer Operations,) "the date of the iniation of the campaign of 
this magnificent Army of the Potomac was the date of the resuscitation of the rebel 
cause, which seemefl to grow strong joare passu with the slow progress of its 
operations ?" 

What the first favoring influence was, we need be at no loss to determine. The 
uaexpected delay of the whole month of April before Yorktown — the military 
strength of which was so ludicrously inadequate to have arrested the march of our 
army, that it was long before the rebels would believe the evidence of their own 
eyes that McClellan had actually called a halt — gave the rebels ample time to 
look about them,- to form their plana and to set on foot their execution. The first 
fruit of this was the Conscription Law, which, let it be observed, was passed by the 
Confederate Congress at Richmond on the 16th day of April, in the midst of 
McClellan's tragi-comedy of the spade before Yorktown ; and this was immediately 
followed by the re organization of the Confederate army. Moreover the bitter 
manner in which the defeats of the West brought home to the leaders the military 
maxim that in attempting to cover everything one covers nothing, had taught 
them the policy of concentration, and they speedily began its application in Vir- 
ginia. 

The effect of these measures was, of course,. not immediate; but Gen. McClellan 
delayed long enough at various points to permit their full development. Faulty in 
strategy though the transfer of the army to the Peninsula must be considered 
— ^faulty as involving a necessary division of force and an enormous waste of time, 
without eliminating or diminishing any of the difficulties of the direct advance, but, 
on the contrary exaggerating them all — nevertheless, considering the low ebb to 
which' the rebel fortunes had sunk, and the weak and demoralized condition of the 
rebel army in Virginia, at the initiation of the campaign on the Peninsula, we are 
warranted by the facts in saying that a vigorous advance fron Fortress Monroe 
would have brought the Union army into position to fight a battle for the posses- 
sion of Richmond, with the chances of success decidedly on our side. This might 
again have been possible, a month later, after the battle of Williamsburg. It might 
still have been possible another month later on the heels of Fair Oaks. But it was 
reserved for Gen. McClellan, by a display of timidity and indisposition to act 
amounting absolutely to disease, to weary and wear out the patience of Fortune 
till at length she ceased to present any more golden opportunities. What was pos- 
sible to- us in April, was no longer possible in August, and the force which, as we 
now know, had abandoned Yorktown without plans of future action, and which was 
driven out of Williamsburg, was able three months afterwards — thanks to 
McClellan's considerate delays — to assume the offensive and throw his army pell- 
mell back in disastrous retreat on the .James, 

But I anticipate. On the "discovery"' of the withdrawal of the rebels on the 
morning of the 6th of May, Gen. Stoneman, with his cavalry Corps and four batte- 
ries of horse artillery, was sent in pursuit. He was followed by Hooker's Division 
of Heintzelman's Corps. Subsequently the divisions of Kearney, Couch, and Caset 
(of Sumner's Corps) were sent forward. Stoneman came up with the enemy's rear- 
guard at Williamsburg, where a defensive line had been thrown up, which, how- 
ever, it is evident, Johnston was not minded to hold, since his whole army had 
passed teyonc? Williamsburg. It was therefore, simply for the purpose of securing 
the safe withdrawal of the trains that the rebel rear turned sharplj' on Stoneman at 
Williamsburg; and, it being found that Union infantry supports were comin||up, 
Longstreet's division was actually ordered hack to that point. It was between his 
command and the divisions of Sumner's and Heintzelman's corps that, on the fol- 
lowing daj-, the crude, ill-planned, unneces^sary, but, for us, bloody encounter, which 
'£gures in history as the battle of Williamsburg, took place. 

Gen. McClellan, in his Report, skims this affair in a few vague touches — a fact 
that might be accounted for from the circumstances that, not having been person- 



20 

ally present at tliis his first battle, he could know nothing of it from his own know- 
ledge, were it not for the other circumstance, that there are on record dispatches 
revealing, on the part of Gen. McCr.ELLAN. motives and moods of mind totally at 
variance with the representations of his Report. I do not affirm tiiat ihe fact of 
, their being extremely damaging to his military pretensions could have anothing to 
do with tiieir omission. I simply submit to the consideration of candid minds to 
determine what is the real motive of a historical deficit otherwise eo unaccount- 
able. 

Gen. McClellan does not mention, when speaking of the column he "immediate 
ly " sent in pursuit of the enemy, that, had he been left to the motions of his own 
hesitating and cautious spirit, no column ever would had been sent in pursuit at all. 
It was only after the repeated and united solicitations of several of the commanders 
liad at length succeeded in elevating his mettle up to the point of action, that th« 
consented to a force being sent in pursuit, the battle of Williamsburg. 

When, too, it was sent, it was under cireumstanoes that made the horrible confusion 
and disorder that reigned at Williamsburg perfectly inevitable. 

While Gen. McClellan had remained behind at Yorktown, for the purpose, as 
he says, of "completing the preparations forthe departure of Gen. Franklin's and 
other troops to West Point by water" — a task which, under the circumstances, 
that is, considering that Gen. Fuanlin's Division had remained on shipboard 
ever since it arrived, for the very good reason that, spite of Gen. McClellan's 
calls for reinforcements, he could not find room .on the Peninsula to place what 
he had, and that Franklin's movement was a mere diver.^ion and not the main 
business on hand, might surely have been entrusted to the General who was to 
command it.- About noon of Monday the Prince de Joinville and Gen. Spragub 
went down to Yorktown, to induce Gen. McClellan to come up and take charge of 
operations which were going so badly for us. When told the condition of affairs in 
front, Gen. McClellan remarked that he had supposed "those in front could at- 
tend to that little matter." After some time, however, he started from Yorktown, 
reached the vicinity of Williamsburg, just at the close of the battle, and for the 
first time came face to face with the actnal aspect of tha problem there presented. 

Now, if one looks into Gen. McClellan's so-called "Report," with a view to dis- 
eover what purpose he then and there formed in face of the state of facts at Wil- 
liamsbui'g, he will look in vain. But it happens that there are dispatches in exis- 
tence wliieh do photograph Gen. McClellan's mind at this period, and as it is my 
aim to pierce to the historical ti'uth ULderlying the veneer which he has spread over 
these tran.=actions, I will tax the patience of the reader so far as to follow with some 
minuteness the dissection of one of Gen. McClellan's unpuhlished telegrams. 

Whan, toward nightfall, Gen, McClellan arrived before Williamsburg, the enemy 
still held his position thei'e. The troops in the front had been fighting within 
hearing of McClellan during the entire day, but not within his pei'sonal supervision, 
and 18e was, for the most part, ignorant of the true state of affairs. He thought 
that the enemy had a securely intrenched position at Williamsburg, and had thus 
opposed his further advance at that time and he determined to lose time before 
Williamfihurg, just as he had done at Yorktown, This is snfiieieutly apparent from 
the following telegram of May 5, which, notwithstanding its great hisiorical impor- 
tance, Gen. McClellan has not seen fit to re-produce: 

BiTouAC in Fbokt of Williamsbttrgh, I 
May 5—10 P. M. ) 
After arranging; for movement up York river, I was urgenTly sent for here. I find Joe Johnston 
in; front of me in strong force— jsro&aWy greater, a good deal, than my mori; and very strongly 
intrencheil. Hancock has talcen two redoubts, and repulsed h arly's brigade by a real ch»rge of the 
bayonet, taking 1 colonel and 150 prisoners, killing at least two colonels and as many lieutenant- 
colonels, and many privates. His conduct v^as brilliant in tlie extreme I do not know our exact 
loss, but fear Hooker has lost considerably on our lelt, I learn from pr sorters that they intend 
diftputing evry .s ep to Richmond I shall run the risk of at leiixt holding them in cheoJc here, 
while I resume the original plan. My entire force is, undoubtedly, considera ly inferior to that 
oftlhe rebels, who still fight loell : but I will do all Jean with the force at my disposal. 

G. a. MoCLELLAN. 
Major General Commanditi'g. 
Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. 

This telegram certainly contains some very extraordinary features, remarkably 
itldltrative of the peculiar genius of General McClellan. 

He had been "urgently sent for" as if heavy firing in his front during the day 
had not been urgently calling him forward from the moment he heard it, without 
waiting for a summons by special messengers. 

Hancock had made a "real charge with the bayonet," as if to charge the enem'^ 
with the bayonet was something surprising to the last degree, and not to be looked 
for from any portion of his army. 



21 

He " fears that Hooker has lost considerably," because he knew, but knew very 
little more, that Hooker liad been under heavy fire during several hours of the day, 
while he was superintending the movement of Franklin's division (of McDowell'a 
corps) up York river. 

Having found his advance cheeked at Williamsburg, he very gravely informs the 
Secretary of War that he ^'^ will run the risk of at least holding them in check," while 
what J Why, being cheeked himself, he will run the risk of holding tlie enemy in 
check "while he resumes his original plan" — an indefinite expression, which may 
refer to either of two plans, that of turning Gloucester, or that of employing regu- 
lar siege operations, such as he had employed before Yorktown.* 

His entire force he represents as "undoubtedly considerably inferior to that of 
the rebels— a second allusion in the same telegram to an opinion which all the cir- 
cumstances, even at the time, showed to be unfounded, the etiemy having just then 
precipitately fled fronlf Yorktown, and having been driven immediately afterward 
by " a real charge with the bayonet" — certainly no signs of superiority on their 
pait. 

He saj-s tliat the enemy "still fight well, although the fighting at Williarasburgh, 
that very day, was the first that his army had seriously encountered since General 
McClellnn had been in coinmand of it. 

And, finally, he concludes the telegram by an evident allusion to the McDowell 
subject of complaint, assuring the Secretary of War that he " will do all he can witii 
the force at his disposal" — language indicating very great, if not extreme, despond- 
ency, fearfully foreboding the disasters of a campaign jnst commenced. 

Tills telegram was written at 10 o'clock on the evening of the 5th of May, in 
which we see, as just intimated, that General McClellan speaks of holding the enemy 
in check at Williamsburgh ; while, in fact, the enemy, as he then thought, had not 
only checked /tisadv/ance, but was in position behind "strong intrenchiuents," as he 
calls them, to hold him in cheek ; and he deliberately reports his purpose of resum. 
ing his oiiginal plan, the execution of which would have required time, instead of 
breaking through the enemy's lines. 

But what was the true state of the case ? This may be seen by the telegram 
ef ttte next morning, dated at Williamsburgh, and addiessed to the Secretary of 
War. 

Hkadqitarters Armt op Potomac, ) 
Williamsburg, Va , May 6. f 
I have the pleasure to announce the occupation of this place as ihf r^ suit of the haril-fought ac- 
tion of yesterday. The effect of Hancock's brilliant ensragemenl yesterday afternoon wms to turn tho 
left of their line of worlcs He was strongly reinforced, and the enemy abuiidoned the entire posi- 
tion duriog ;he night, leaving all his sick and woUndqd in our hands 'IMie victory is complete. 
** * * Am I aiitAorized to follow fhe example otother»generals, and direct the names 

of battles to be placed on the colors of regiments ? "We have other battles to fight before reaching 
Richmond. 

G, B. MoCLBLLAN, 
Major General Oommandirhg. 

At ten o'clock during the night of the 5th of May, General McClellan formally re- 
ports that he will hold the enemy in check, when, in fact, his rCHl opinion was that 
the enemy held him in check ; and he quite distinctlj' declares his purpose of resort- 
ing to measures requii-ing time to obtain possession of Williamsbuigh, when at the 
moment of writing that dispatch General Hancock, by acting in the spirit of the 
President's reeonamendation to break the enemy's lines, but without specific iastruo- 
tions from General McClellan, had turned their position, and had actually com- 
passed what General McClellan despaired of accomplishing, except by slow opera- 
tions. On the morning of the 6th of May General McClellan, passing suddenly from 
a state of extreme despondency, reports exultingly that the victory of the 5th of 
May "is complete." 

In the state of despondency he exaggerates the strength of the enemy, plainly an 
excuse for his delay before Yorktown, and sets it down as " considerably greater 
than his own ;"' but says he will do all he can with the force at his disposal — when 
the facts show that the enemy abandoned Yorktown without waiting for an attack, 
and were driven out of Williamsburgh by a brilliant assault made by troops acting 
under an inspiration, which General McOIellan's extreme " caution" could not alto- 
gether restrain. 

It is by precisely such manipulation as this — that is, by constantly putting as 

*And here it may be observed, that while he was ernployed before Yorktown, the enemy con- 
structed his line of defence six or eiijht miles in the rear, where General MclUellan proposed to 
consume more time, giving the enemy leisure for the construction of auaiher line felill further in the 
rear, as if he intended to aid the enemy in disputing " every step to li^chmond ;" the purpose of 
the enemy, according to information received (rom " prisoners." 



22 

origiaal motives what were really afterthoaghts, and by an adroit use of the sup- 
pressio veri — that General MeOlellaa endeavors to give a false coloring to astions 
and events. But unfortunately for the success of this operation, there are too many 
"damned spots" that will not "out" for all his washing. 

Of these there is now another that must be set forth. 

When General MoGlellan, after the battle of Williamsburgh took up his march by 
the line of the York river, and thence along the railroad to the Chickahominy, in- 
stead of striking across obliquely to the James, and using that river as his line of 
supplies— a course rendered possible by the destruction of the Merrimac — we are, 
according to his Report, to believe that it was with extreme reluctance that be 
adopted this plan, to which he attempts to make it appear that he was reduced by 
the intermeddling of the authorities at Washington. 

In response to General McClellan's constant calls for reinforcements it was deter- 
mined that McDowell's corps, at Fredericksburgh, should move oveiland to make a 
junction either north or south of the Pamunkey, with the right of the Army of the 
Potomac, and co operate in the reduction of Richmond. 

Informed of this determination by a dispatch from the Secretary of War, under 
date of May 18, General McClellan goes off in a fit of well simulated rage, and de- 
clares that this determination, and the necessity it imposed of taking the line of the 
York river, destroyed all his plans. " This order," he says, " rendered it impossible 
for me to use the James river as a line of operations, a.ni forced me to establish our 
depots on the Pamunkey and to approach Richmond from the north. * * 

* The land movement obliged me to expose my right in order to secure the junc- 
tion ; and as the order for General McDowell's march was soon countermanded, I 
incurred great risk, of which the enemy finally took advantage and frustrated the 
plan of campaign." 

Kow, is General McClellan so short of memory, or is he purposely guilty of so 
shameless an inconsistency, that he dares to make such an assertion as this, when 
he is himself on record, under solem,n oath, in a sense directly the reverse ? 

In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, General Mc- 
Clellan in reply to the specific questions — " Coald not the advance on Richmond 
from Williamsburgh hd!ve been made with better prospect of success by the James 
river than by the route pursued, and what were the reasons for taking the route adop- 
ted I" — stated as follows : 

"I do not think that the navy at that time was in a condition to make the line of the James 
river perfectly secure for our supplies. -The line of the Pamunkey offered greater advantages in 
Viat re-pect. The place teas in a better poHtion to effect a junction with any troopn that might 
move from Washington on the Fredericksburgh lins . I remember that the ilea of moving on 
the James river was sericnisly discussed at that time. But the conrhision was arrived at that, 
wider the eircumstances then existing, the ruute actually followed., wan the best." 

I leave to others the task of harmonizing these " points of mighty opposites," 
and of determining which is original motive and which afterthought. If they can- 
not be harmonized, I leave the reader to stamp with its fitting characterizatr»n 
this assertion of General McClellan's. 

But the truth of history requires me to go farther, and to point out that it was not 
at Williamsburgh but at Roper's church, where the army was, teti days previously, 
that it was necessary to decide whether he would there cross tiie Chickalxominy 
(undefended) and approach the James nver, (then open to us by the destruction of 
the Merrimac,) or continue on the Williamsburgh road toward Richmond. The de- 
cision was made then and there, and the decision was to move by the York and 
Pamunkey. So that so far from its being true, as claimed by General McClellan — 
that the dispatch of the Secretary of War " ordering" him to connect by land with 
McDowell, obliged him to renounce a route by which, as he would now lead us to 
believe, he could have taken Richmond, the truth is that the choice of route w^s 
voluntarily made by General McClellan ten days before this order he quotes was given; 
and yet he has in his report the astounding assurance to complain of the order in 
question as subjecting him to " great risks," of which the enemy finally " took ad- 
vantage" and "frustrated ''the plan of campaign 1" 

What the enemy took advantage of — and what he would have been a fool had he 
not taken advantage of — was Gen. McClellan's own ill judged scheme of operations, 
by which he gave the Rebels an interior position between himself and the force 
covering Washington. Just as Gen. McDowell was about to start from Fredericks- 
burg, with a reinforcement of forty thousand men, came the news of Jickson's raid 
up the Shenandoah Valley, and Gen. McDowell was ordered by the Piesid-nt to 
send first one division, tlaen another, and then his whole force, to fbUow Jackson — 
a request which is evident from Gen, McDowell's dispatches, he complied with with 



23 

extreme reluctance, as it, for the time being, diverted him from his proposed march 
tojoia MoCli'Ilan, which he had extremely at heart. 

Thus earlv was the order detainiug MuDowell'a corps to cover WashiuE^ton fully- 
justified! This, as well as all the circumstanees of the case, are fully set forth in a 
dispatch from the President, under date of May 25, in which, after giving the details 
of Jackson's movement and the dispositions that had beeu made in consequence, he 
concludes as follows: 

"If Mel)nweir xforcz ican now heyond our reaih, we should he utterly helpless. Apprehension 
of something like this, and no unwillingness to sustain you, haa always been my reason 
for withhclding McDowell's force from you. Please u7iderstandthU, and do the bestyoi* can 
with the force you have." 

I submit if i.his language does not display, on the part of the President, a temper 
worthy the name of sublime, especially when we consider it was addressed to 
the man who, of all others, had most tried his patience — the man whose conduct, on 
numberless occasions, had deserved his severesjt displeasure — the man to whom the 
President had conceded unlimited means for preparing one of the most powerful 
armies ever raised in any country — the man who, after all, evaded by an attempted 
artifice, the orders of his constitutional chief, thereby exposing the capital of the 
nation to be sacked by the enemy, and exposing also his really grand army to defeat 
and danger of imminent destruction? 

The countermanding of the order given to McDowell, gave McClellan what was 
far more valuable to him than the actual reinforcements which that General would 
have brought — to wit, an excuse, or the semblance of an excuse for further delays. 
For a long time he and his friends were able to saddle on that detention all the 
blame of his failures; but this shallow trick has ceased to be possible since the 
publication of the documents in the case; and I may add that it has ceased to be 
possible since the publication of Gen. McOlellan's own report. 

Gen. McClellan states that "the infoi-matiou that McDowell's corps would march 
from Fredricksburgh on the following Monday, (the 26th,) and that he would be 
under my command, was cheering neios, and I now felt that we would on hin arrival 
be ^efficiently strong to overpower the large army confronting u.f." This is simulated 
joy and had no being in the bosom of Gen. McClellan at the time. The fact is Gen. 
McClellan did not wish Gen. McDowell to join him by an overland march; he 
wished him to come by water on his rear, ^nd stated at the time that he would 
rather not have him at all than have him come overland! This fact is abundantly 
proven by numerous di^patclies, published and unpublished. Thus, under date of 
May 21, he writes: " 1 fear there is little hope MoDowell can join me overland in, 
thne for the coming battle." (One would suppose from this that he was going to 
fight a battle in ten minutes ) But if he did not think McDowell would be able to 
join him "in time" bv an overland march of fifty miles, (an easy three or four 
days' march,) how co. \ he expect him to join him in time by the water route, 
when, according to his experience, the transit could not have been accomplished 
short of a fortnight? This is iterated and reiterated day after day, and finally, in 
a dispatch, under date of June 14, he says, with still greater emphasis: 

" It, ought to be distinctly understood that McDowell and his troops are completely under my 
control, I received a telegraph from him requesting that McOall's Division miglit be placed so 
ag to join him immediately oti his arrival, i hat requast does not breathe thu proiier spirit. — 
"WhMtbVer troops come to me must be so disposed of a.-, to do the most "ood. I d .not feel f.-el that, 
in such circumstances as those in which 1 am now placed, Gen. McDowell should wish the 
general interest to be sacrificed for the purpose of incre^ing his command. If I cannot fuUy 
control a I his troops, I loant none of them, but would prefer to fight the battle with what I 
have, and let others be responsible for the results." 

Now, speaking of what does and what does not " breathe the proper spirit," I 
would like to ask whether this astounding declaration of Gen. McClellan "breathes" 
exactly the "proper spirit?" According to his own repeated declarations, he was 
in a position in which reinforcements were absolutely essential, and yet he prefers 
not to have them at all, unless he can have them by a route, coming by ivJdch they 
■would have required thrice the length of time, and by which they would also have been 
put out of the possihilily of offering any protection to the threatened Capital of the 
nation. The only advantage his plan presented is that it would have enabled him 
to breakup McDowell's divisions as they arrived, and assign them to the commands 
of his own favorites, and rid him of th.e man whom he had come to regard with the , 
green eye of jealousy. I submit to the candid reader to determine whether Gen. 
McClellan is in a situation to throw himself back on his injured innocence, and 
claim for himself and his conduct such pure and elevated and unselfish and patriotic 
motives, or whether all these claims are not the most hollow and unmitigated 
pretence. ' 



24 

Of events oa the Chictahominy, so damning to McClellan, so hnnailiating to 
the whole country, there is neither the space nor the patience here to speak.*— ^ 
Two decisive battles were fought on the Chictahominy — Fair Oaks and Gainee' 
Mill. Tbey were not battles of McClellan's seeking — they wei<fi brought on by the 
rebels, and we are thus presented with the odd spectacle of a General seeking a 
' special theatre of war for the purpose of waking not only an offensive, but a " rapid" 
and "brilliant" movement, compelled each time he met the enemy to fight on the 
defensive. We have the further spectacle of a man who was constantly clamoring 
for reinforcements, ^^/(/m/^ his two chief battles, the first with one half , the second 
voith less than one third his force I 

To the last we find him persisting in the demand for more troops — to the last 
we find him the man who was ready to 

"Drink up Esile, eat a, crocodile," 

doing nothing with what he had. "If at this instant," says he, the day after the 
battle of Gaines' Mill, " I could dispose of ten thousand fresh men, I could gain the 
victory to-morrow " — a statement to which we might reply that, had he not allowed 
Porter's corps to be slaughtered the day before, he would have had the ten thousand 
he there lost. But it is very remarkable that, with an enemy '' two hundred 
thousand" strong, and behind "strong entrenchments," he should have deemed 
himself capable of "gaining the victory " with a feeble reinforcement of ten thousand 
men which would have been no more than he had during all the time he did not 
"gam a victory." In fact, his victories on paper and in hypothesis, are part of the 
wonderful phenomena of Gen. McClellan's character. 

Having lost his base, and the enemy being planted across his communications, it 
only remained for Gen. McClellan to beat a retreat to the James River. This act 
he dignified at the time by the euphenism of " change of base " — a phrase which 
has since then acquired a ludicrous meaning jt will long to lose. 

The retreat to the James, considering the bulk of the enemy was on the left bank 
of the Chickahominy and a long march off, was not difficult. But, notwithstanding 
this fact, and that the troops were put in the most obvious positions, and that in 
no case was Gen. McClellan present at any of the engagements of the " seven days' 
fight." this movement has been claimed as a masterpiece of strategy — compara- 
ble, say his admirers, only to Moreau's retreat through the Black Forest. And I 
dare say that the credit in the one case is about as just as in the other ; for Napoleon 
proclaims that Moreau's retreat was "the greatest blunder he ever committed." — 
" As the Directory," adds he, " could not give Moreau credit for a victory, thet/ did 
for a retreat, which they caused to he extolled in the highest terms; but, instead of 
credit, Moreau merited the greatest censure and disgrace for it." ,1 leave the 
parallel to the reader's own apprehension. 

In all the battles during this retrograde movement, we have the same utter want 
of head-^Gen. McClellan in each case being absent getting a fresh position to fall 
back upon. This is the first time that we have known that it is the- first and highest 
duty of a Commanding General to reconnoitre positions for a retreat. " The Corps 
Commandt-rs," says Gen. Heintzleman, in bis testimony before the Committee on the 
Conduct of the War, ^^ fought their troops according to their own ideas. We helped 
each other. If anybody asked for reinforcements, I sent them? if I wanted rein- 
forcements, I sent to others. He [McClellan] was the most extraordinary roan I 
ever saw. I do not see how any 7nan could leave so much to others, and be so confident 
that everything would go just right." Even at the last of the series ot battles, when 
a defeat would have thrown his army into the James River, at Malvern, we find 
him, with the exception of a brief period previous to and at the end of the fight, 
away "on board a gunboat," and this, notwithstanding the admitted fact that the 
innate valor of our troops gave the enemy so decided a repulse that, if vigorously 
followed up, they might even then have been followed up into Richmond. 

So ends the story of the strange, eventful campaign on the Peninsula — a campaign 
which, though ill-planned, was worse executed, and in which the utter incapacity 
of the Commanding General to take advantage of even such opportunities as fortune 
threw in his way, was most signally demonstrated. . Gen. McClellan did not bring 
back with him such an armj' as he had taken away. He brought back an army 
demoralized, worn down by useless toil, reduced by sickness, almost unmatched in 
the annals of war. He found the rebel cause at the lowest ebb, and the rebel army 

* A full criticism of the whole of McClellan's military conduct on the peninsula will be found 
in the seriet of articles in the N. T. Times, reviewing McClellan's Keport, by the present writer. 



I 



25 

demoralized and dis.pirited. He left one in the flood-tide of success, the morale of 
• the other reetored by the prestige of great victories. 

IX. ' 

HOW POPE GOT OUT OF HIS "SCRAPE." 

If the army had sustained itself nobly throughout the sad campaign on the Pen- 
iusulfl, it Oiiiinot be denipJ that so much fruitless toil aod so much disaster had 
impaired its morale, while the lo?ses in battle and the epideniics of the region had 
greatly tliinned its i-anks. It therefore became a serious question when the army 
arriv^ed at Hariis-m's Landing whether it should be allowed to r<-main or be brought 
away.* At first there seems to hare been no other intention than to reinforce McClel- 
lan and let him try it once again. He had promised if furnished with twenty thou- 
sand mt^n to a8s\nne the offensive and attempt a fresh advance towards Richmond. 
Accordingly Shield's division was sent him and other troops were about to be forward- 
ed when he put up his request to 50,000 men, and finally demanded reinforcements 
"rather much over than under 100,000 sti'ong." It was utterly impossible to furnish 
this number, and this reason, joined to the fact that a maj rity of the highest officers 
of the army of the Potomac counseled a withdrawal, and that a movement to effect 
a junction with the forces in front of Washington, now under General Pope, was 
essential to cover the Capital against the attack which the rebels were absolutely 
certain to make, and for which they were at this very time actually preparing, de- 
termined the Administration to recall the army from the Peninsula. 

The order for the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula was given by Gen^ 
eral Halleck, ou the 3d of August. The point to which it was ordered was Aquia 
Creek, for the purpose pi making a junction with the forces under Pope, on the 
Rappahannock. It is hardly necessary to say that after this course was determined 
upon the utmost possible promptitude in execution of the design was absolutely 
necessary, for there could be ko doubt that the purpose of the rebels looking to- 
ward a movement on Washington would receive the most powerful stimulus by the 
knowledge of the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula. 

But instead of this, we find General McClellan sitting down to expostulation, and 
after he had exhausted this, we see him throwing every practical obstacle in the 
way of getting the army back. He urges " the terribly depressing effect on the North 
and the strong probability that it would induce foreign powers to recognize our ad- 
versaries," whereas the fact is, there was hardly an iEttelligent man in the North 
who was not looking with the most intense anxiety to the removal of the army to 
a position where it could be interposed between the enemy and the menaced Capi- 
tal of the nation. He promises, however, if his counsel does not prevail, to "obey 
the order with a sad heart." 

This " sadness " of his heart seems to have so enfeebled his hand, that though he 
was ordered to commence the removal of the army on the 8d of August, day after 
day passed before anything was done toward it. "It is believed," writes General 
Halleck to him under date of the 5th, ''that it [the removal] can be done now 
without serious danger. This may dot be so should there be any delay." 

Finally, on the lOth, he received dispatches which should have stirred the mosfc 
sluggish nature to activity : " They are fighting General Pope to-day — there must be 
no further delay in your movements ; that which has already occurred was nnexpected 
and must be satisfactorily explained." This onlj gives McClellan an opportunity to 
show the enormouK "inherent difficulties of the moveifient" — difficulties which wer« 
pointed out to him before he started to take the army to the Peninsula, but which he 
th.en made light of — and he ends by adding : "It is not possible for any one to plae« 
this array where you wish it in less than a month ; if Washington is in danger now 
this ar?ny can scarcely arrive in time to save it I" What a cheering person General 
McClellan is t 

Without following these transactions through all their maddening details, suffice 
it ta say that it was the 20th of the month — seventeen days after the order for with- 
drawal wa" given — before the army was ready to embark at Yorktown, Fortress 

* There U connected with this portion of McClellan's career one curious piece of history that 
Qjeritg a passing notice here. Readers of the Report will not have failed to have noted an extra- 
ordinary letti r addressed by General McClellan to the President, from Harrison's Bar, under date 
of July T, giving Uis " views " on the political situation. This document opens with this state- 
ment thai tha " rebellion has assumed the character of a war "—a discovery which, perhajw, 
explaias the peace principles on which General McClellan had been operating;, but which it is 
a misfortune he did not malce at an earlier date. It then proceeds to indicate a politico-military 
prog^ammo of the moral suasion stamp, stating that " a declaration of radical views, especially 



26 - 

Monroe and Newport's News. And with this I leave it, to find it turning op 
again at Alexandria, where I shall have to review a series of events, the most ex- 
traordinary, perhaps, in General MeClellan's extraordinary career. 

The whole i-ebel army was now rapidly marching northward to overwhelm Pope 
and precipitate itself on Washington. If Gen. MeClellan's own estimate of the rebel 
force, at 2(>0 000, was correct, Pope had upon him a force six times his strength, 
and, as it was, he certainly had upon him a force three or fowr times his strength. 
His instructions were to " stand fast" on the Rappahannock — to "fight like the 
devil and contest every inch of ground." In this task, he was cheered by the " 
announcement that from Alexandria he woald speedily receive heavy rein- 
forcements, among which was the corps of Franklin, which he de.'^igned to move to 
Gainesville, a position which covered Manassas Junction, and watched the gaps in 
the Piedmont Ridge. 

With the view of giving effect to this purpose, Gen. Halleck, on the morning of 
the 27th of Aui^ust, telegraphed to McClellan, who had arrived in Alexandi'ia the 
day before, and through whom all reinforcements to Pope must pass, that ".Frank- 
lin's corps should march in the direction of Manassas as soon as possible." Had 
this orde)' been obeyed, Jackson's forces, defeated and driven by Pope on the 27th, 
would have been met near Centreville the next afternoon and crushed. 

Now I ask of the reader to bring all the attention and patience he can co nmand, 
while I show with what fertility of device, and what prodigality of ingenuity, 
Gen. MeClellan contrived so to arrange things that Pope should not get a man of 
these reinforcements; but should be left with his feeble force of less than forty 
thousand men to a death-grapple with the enemy that had lately defeated ilcOlel- 
lan's once splendid army of one hundred and fifty thousand men : in other words, 
fihould be left to — I use Gen. MjClellaa's own choice phraselogy — ^' get out of his 
scrape." And I shall show that so eom|rletely successful was he that not a single 
man ever reached Pope after McGlellan arrived at Alexandria. 

In this expose I shall take up events in their chronolosical order, beginning with 
the date of the first dispatch to McClellan with reference to the forwarding of re- 
inforcements. I shall show what was the state of facts in front, what were the ne- 
©essities of the occasion, what orders Gen. McClellan received, and how he carried 
them out. Let me add that I shall not draw from the testimony of Gen Pope, nor 
from the overwhelming array of facts developed by the Committee on the Conduct 
of the War. I shall eonfiine myself to the simple setting forth of the text of the 
series of telegrams that passed botweeu headquarters and Gen. McClellan, though 
I shall be forced to draw from many dispatches which Gen. McClellan, for reasons 
best known to himself, has not seen fit to reproduce in his so-called " Report." 

The 21th of August. — At 10 A. M., Gen. Halleck telegraphs McClellan: 

''Franklins Corps shonld. march in that direction [Manassas] as soon as possible." 

At 10 20 Gen. McClellan replies: 

" I have sent orders to Franklin to prepare to march, aaxd to repair here [Alexandria] in 
jgtfson, to inform me as to his means of transportation." 

At noon Gen. Halle«k reiterates, with emphasis, his order to Fraskliii to 
march. 
'■(• 

" Fianklin's corps should move out by forced marches, carrying three or four days provision." 

To this Gen. McClellan replies at 1 15 P. M. : 

"Franlilin'e artillery have no horses, except for four guns;" and adds: ^^ I do not see tha^toe 
home force en oiigh in hand to form a connection with Pope, whose exact position we do not 
know.'" 

Is it not very strange that in order that Franklin shou d march with his corps. Gen. 
McClellan should begin by calling him away /rom it? If Franklin's arrllery lacked 
horses, why did he not take horses which were in abundance in Alexandria? That 
this was so, I shall presently establish conclusively; and I shall also show that 
ntither McClellan, nor Franklin, ever applied for transportation to the Quartermaih 
ter's Dfpartment, lehich was ready inftantlg to furnish it. 

upon Slavery, loill rapidly disintegrate our present armie.s.^ Now, what is n'>tal(ltt in this 
paper is, that it wfis tcHten in Washinatou before he left fir his Peninsular oamp'iiQn. and wot 
intended to be i-tsued in Richmond He fancied he would there be in a position U> dictate terms 

' iind indicate the public policy. Not finding his expected opportunity to lire off the shot he had 

prepared, he tootc'the best occasion he could find ; and so, pullin£;on a " tag" at the beirinning 

' >atid the end, he brought it out at IIa^ri^on'8 Landing Its ineffable impudenci'. the haggard 

^'d untimely took it wears, and the inherent absurdity of the proposition t<> deal leniently 

with those at whose bands he Uadjuel Buffered disastrous defeat, are sufSciently accounted for b^f 

'tale eircuoislaneea detailed. < 



27 ■ • 

The 28<A of August. — On the morning of the 28th, Halleck telegraphs directly to 
Franklin : 

"Oa parting with Gen. McClellaTi. about 2 o'clock this morning, it was understood tha,t you 
were to move with your corps to-day toward Manassas Junction, to drive the enemy from the 
railroad. I have just learned that the general has not returned to Alexandria. If you have not 
received his order, act on this." 

To this, at 1 P. M., McClellan, not Franldin, replies: 

"Tour dispatch to Franklin received. I have been doing all possible to hurry artillery and 
cavalry. The moment that Franklin can be started with a reasonable amount of artillery ht) shall 
go * ***** Please see Barnard, and be sure the works toward the Chain 
Bridge are perfectly secure. I look upon those works, Ethan Allen and Marcy, as of the first 
Importance." 

At 3 30 P. M., Halleck impatiently telegraphs McClellan: 

'■'■Not a ■momeiit 7nust be. lost in pursuing as large a focce aa possible toward Manasses, so as 
to communicate with Pope before the enemy is reinforced." 

To this McClellan repliel at 4 40 P. M. : 

" Gen Frarikliri i6 with me here. I will know in a few minutes the condition of artillery and 
cavalry. We are not yet in a condition to move — mat/ be by to-morrcw morning." 

At 8 40 P. M., Halleck still more imperatively telegraphs: 

"There must be no further delay in moving Franklin's corps toward Manassas; they must go to- 
morrow m,orning, ready or not ready. If we delay too long to get ready, there will be no ne- 
cessity to go at all for Pope will either be defeated or victovioxis without our aid. If therexis a 
want of wagons, the men must carry provisions with them till the wagons can come to their 
relief." 

To -which Gen. -McClellan replies at 10 P. M. : 

'•Tour dispatch received. Franklin's corps has been ordered to march at 6 o'clock to-morrow 
morning. Sumner has about 14,000 infantry, without cavalry or artillery, here." 

These dispatches give the history of the 28th of August. Not one of these is 
published by Gen. McClellan in his Report. They show the reiterated orders Gen, 
McClellan received to send reinforcements to Pope, and the imminence of the crisis 
that was upon that General. They show on the part of McClellan the shallow sub- 
terfuges he employed to avoid obeying these orders. In this whole series of excus- 
es, there is but one that presents even the show of sebstantiallity — namely the sup- 
posed lack of transportation ; but the utter baselessness of this pretence is made 
manifest by a dispatch of Gen. Halleck a day or two afterward, in which he says: 
"I learned last night (29th) that the Quartermasters Department would have given 
him (Franklin) plenty of transportation if he had applied for it any time since his 
arrival at Alexandria." 

The 29th of August. — At length, two whole days after the imperative order was 
given to Gen. McClellan to have Franklin "move out by forced marches," he is able 
to saj"-, "Franklin's corps is in motion." To be sure, Gen. McClellan confesses that 
his repeated promises throughout the the two previous days to send Franklin for- 
ward were all sham, for he says; "I should not have moved him but for your press- 
in'g orders of last night." Still he is at length under way, and there is yet a possi- 
bility that he will reach Pope in time. Vain hope! He halts Franklin at Anan- 
dale and coolly telegraphs to Halleck: 

" Do you wisli the movement of FranJdin's corps to contiinte f He is without reserve ammuni- 
tion and without transportation." 

Gen. Halleck must be a very mild mannered man, for he simply replies : 

' ' I leant Franklin's corps to -move far ennugh to find out something about the enemy. Perhaps 
he may get such information at Anandale as to prevent his going further ; otherwise, he will 
push on toward Fairfax. Try to get something from direction of Manassas, either by telegrams 
or through Franklin's scouts. Our people ■must ■move m-ore actively, and find otit where the ene- 
my is. I am tired of guesses." 

Gen. McClellan had now exhausted all the resources of a diabolical ingenuity in 
order to keep Pope from receiving reinforcements. He had by this means gained 
two days and a half; that is, from 10 A. M. of the 2'7th until 3 P. M. of the 29th, 
He kne-w that Pope had by this time the whole rebel army upon him. He knew 
that a great battle was that very morning and afternoon going on, for the roar of 
the artillery came to his ears at Alexiandria, where he held thirty thousarid loyal 
Americans in the leash, while their brothers in arms were being overwhelmed. It 
was a crisis with McClellan, and he must either let the troops go forward to Pope 
or devise a new system of tactics. He could no longer pretend that he did not 
know where Pope was — he could no longer pretend that he did not know how far 
Gen. Halleck wished Franklin to advance. He was brought to the wall by Gen. 
Halleck's emphatic order. " Our people must find out where the enemy is !" 

Gen. McClellan was equal to the emei-gency. He drops the correspondence with 
Halleck, and cooky indites to the President of the United States the following dis- 



28 

pat<;h, the most extraordinary ever penned by any man wearing a soldier's uniform. 
I pause for a moment to ask the reader to take iu a full realizing sense of the 
import of the following amazing words: 

1 "The last news I received from the direction of Manassas wa^ from stragglers, to the effect 
that the finfmy wera evacuiiiiig (Jenterville and retiring towards TliDroughfare Oap. This i« by 
no means reliable. I am clear thai one of two courses should be a liipled. Flrxt — To concen- 
trate all our aviilahlft forces to open communication with i'ope. '^eaoul — To lertv? Pope to get 
out of hix scrape^ 'AniX Ai oiMe to use all means to make the Capital perfectly safe. No middle 
course will now answer. Tfll me what you wish me to do and I will do all in ray power to ae- 
couolish it. I wish to know what my orders and authority are. I ask lor nothing, but will obey 
whatever orders you give. I only ask a prompt decision, that I may at once give the necessary 
orders. It will nut do to delay longer." 

Expressive silence is the only possible comment on this astounding proposition, 
for the profound horror and contempt such words inspire take away all power of 
cool di.ssection. It is said that when Mr. Lincoln read ttiis dispatoh he fell back in 
his chair in a half fainting fit.and even at this distance of time it is hardj}^ pi«sibl€ 
to read it wi(,hout a sinking of the heart. 

_ General M'-Clellan in the above proposition suggests two course?,. I need not 
Bay that they are substantially one and the same. He knew that I^ee's junction wiilt 
Jackson was now certain — Fitz John Porter had attended to that. In either case, 
therefore, Pofie ^as perfectly certain to be left to " </e/, out of his scrape." 

But what was the " scrape " out of which Pope was to get? Into what horrible 
indiscretion — so unwarranted that to leave him to 'get out" of it was only just 
punishment on him — had he rushed? Will it be believed that he got into "the scrape" 
at the urgent, instance of General McClellan, who begged Pope to 'make a diversion 
in his favor? Will it be believed that, -with the loyal alacrity of a true soldier, be 
had, in obedience to this request, thrown himself down on the Rapidan to compel 
the enemy to loose his hold on the Army of the Potomaa — that he received the 
whole Weight of the rebel force precipitated upon him — that with masterly general- 
ship he kept back that foree for seventeen days, fighting in that time several large 
battles, in which, repeatedly successful, he gave the rebe's their first taste of true 
punishment — ^hat by this means he succeeded in gaining time sufficient for General 
McClellan to bring back his army to the defence of the Capital? Yet such are the 
fact? which history records. Now we understand. This was the " scrape " Pope 
wa.^ to get out of! 

Ihe 30''A of August. — I have exhausted the main action in this strange drama, 
but there remains an episode that should take its place in this recital. So far as th« 
keeping back of reinforcements g'^es, General McClellan had done his best that Pope 
should not '"get out of his scrape." But there remains a touch beyond this. Pope's 
ammunition, rations and forage were now exhausted, and he sent to Washington to 
procure supplies. General McClellan was to fill the orders. You shall now see how 
he did it. 

To the request for ammmunition. General McClellan telegraphs at 1 : 10 p. m. : 
"I know nothing of the calibre of Pope's artillery." Yet he was within two minutes 
telegraphic communication with the Ordnance Bureau at Washington, where he 
might have had full information on this point ;: 

To the request for rations, General Franklin replies : 

" I have been instructed by General McClellan to inform yon that he will have all the availabtc 
wagons at Alexandria loaded with rations for your troops, and all of the cars also, cm aoon. as y<yj 
vnZl send in a caonlry escort to Atexarylria as a gtuird to tee traiu. 

I cannot better set forth this matter in its true bearings than by giving t)>e 
following passage from General Pope's official report : 

" About daylight of the SOth, I received a note from General Franklin, written by direction of 
€kneral MciUellan, informing me that rations and forage icomW be loaded in o all the available 
wagons and cars at Alexaddria, as soon as I would send bacd a cavalry escort to guard the trains. 
Buch a letter, when we were flghling the enemy, anM Alexandria was swarming with trfiops, needs 
no comment. Bad as was the condition of our cavalry, I was in no situation to spare troops from 
the front, nor could they have gone to Alexandria and retunred within tlie time by tohicA u>* 
fnnst have had provisions or have fiUen back in the direction ■/ Washington ; nor do I »** 
what service ca/calry could have rendered in guarding railroad trains." 

I must let this close this exposition of the extraordinary series of transaction* 
tt Alexandria, in which I have done little else than allow official dispatches to tell 
1heir own story. I leave the reader to form his own judgment and pronounce )iU 
own verdict. But one remark remains. I have hitherto had occasion to call iu 
question General McClellan's capacity. The conduct here set forth invitee a ques- 
tion of his loyalty. I cannot enter General McClellHn's private thought, and piuok 
out the "heart of his mystery." It is po3^ible that bis condact at Al. xandria wa« 
notbiog more than the effect of heartless selfiahnesa and ambition, which can lead 



29 

np to the very door of treason without passing within. It is now certain that it 
was the avowed purpose of McClellan and his friends so to arrange matters as that 
the army should, to use their expression, "fall back into his arms" at Washington. 
For thid eud it was tssential that Pope should not obtain reiuforceuients, for had ha 
received the thirty thousand troops that lay idle at Alexandria, he would beyond a 
doubt have beaten the rebel army. That he should do so was manifestly not at all 
in General MuCieilau's programme. 

Looking at Geueial McClellan's eouductas it stands revealed in his own dispatfcbes, 
I can only say to him, " if this be loyalty, make the most of it." 

X. 

CLOSING SCENES IN McCLELLAN'S CAREER. 

If, now, after theea;jDos^ I have made of the conduct of General McClellan in tiie 
extraoi'dinai'y series ot transactions recorded in the preceeding chapter, the ques- 
tion be asketl, why it was that, after behavio^ which in any other country in the 
world would have caused him to be court-martialed, we tind that general not only 
NOT called to account, but presently restored to the full command of the Army of 
the Potomac, I fraukly reply that this question must be left to history to an- 
swer. History will not fail to ask the question, but the answer will be given both 
with a tulier knowledge of all the facts in the case than we now possess, and under 
circurnstatices when those considerations of the public good that now put a check 
on our venturing on even such revelations as it is in our power to make, will no 
longer be in t'urce. We can, however, anticipate the verdict in so far as to say that 
history will recognize that, in his action in this matter, Mr. Lincoln was moved only 
by the purest aud ino:»t patriotic motives, and if his yielding of intellectual convic- 
tions wtiich he must even then have formed, indicated a blameable weakness, h« 
erred only from the excess of his unselfish anxiet}- for the public good, at a time 
when things and the thoughts of men were plunged into utter chaos aud collapse. 
Pope had now " gut out of his scrape " — as best he could, and the army had fal- 
len back to Washing! on, where the arrangements of McClellan's friend* to have it 
"fall into his arms" were crowned with all the success they could have desired. 
Pope tell back to the works in front of Washiogton on the 2d of September; on the 
same, McClellan took couKuand, and Lee, filing off the left, proceeded to do what Gen- 
eral McClell lU, ia his first memoranduni, had staked his military sagacity "no capa- 
ble geueral" would do — that is, he crossed the Potomac to make his first invasion 
of the lojal Siatts. 

It is not my purpose to review the Maryland campaign with that fullness of de- 
tail that has characterized the analysis of the previous portion of General McClel- 
lan's career, for uiy aim is not so much to dissect the historical facts themselves as 
to dissect General McClellan's character and conduct as revealed in these facts. 
Now, in this I'egard, what remains funishes really nothing -essentially new. We ar^ 
presented with the same characteristics of getyus aud generalship which we hav« 
already discovered — the same unreadiness to move promptly and act vigorously ; 
the same clduiuriiig for "more troops" before advancing; the same reference to 
the great superi ^rity of numbers on the part of tbe enemy. It is, after all, a dismal 
story, aud has probably already tested the human stomach to its utmost limits. 

In the Mar_j land invasion, the intentions of Lee, after striking Frederick, appear to 
have aiiued exclusively at the capture of Harp.er's Ferry. His combiuatious for thie 
end are uo^v fully revealed by an order of Lee's found at Frederick, and which dis- 
closes the whole programme of operations. By this it appeals ihat the conimande 
of Jackson, Longatreet, Mi,Laws, and Walker — that is, in fact, the whole rebel artny 
with the exception of the division of D. H. Hill — were assigned parts in the cap- 
ture of Harper*6 Feri'y. The single division of D. H. Hill and part of Stuart's cav- 
alry formed the rearguard destined to check any pursuit of McClellan, while the 
whole rebel force should move to the accomplishment of the end proposed. 

In a military point of view this was a bold operation, and the rebel general should 
have. been made to [tay dearly for venturing upon it. And yet, if we consider that 
the combinations oi a commander are necessarily largely influenced by his knowl- 
edge of the character of his opponent, we must admit that Lee, aware of the tardy 
genius of .McClellan, was authorized in taking a step which, against a vigorous op- 
ponent, ought to have seaured his destruction. At any rate, the event fully justi- 
fied his action. McClellan, intrusted with the duty of meeting and crushing th« 
invading army, moved out by slow and easy stages — at an average of six miles a da;^ 
— and accommodated Lee with all the time he needed. Of course, he waa abl« t» 



♦ 



30 

accomplish hia designed object — the capture of Harper's Ferry, its garrisons and 
stores; but connected with this, and General McClellan's responsibility for it, there 
are one or two circumstances that deserve more detailed examination. 

There is no doubt that the moment Lee crossed the Potomac, the forces at Har- 
per's Ferry were placed in a false position and should have been promptly with- 
drawn. But we find no recommendation to this effect by General McCiellan during 
the period in which it was possible to carry it out. His first utterance on the sub- 
ject is in 'a dispatch to General Halleck, dated " Camp near Rockville, Sept. 10," 
in the following terms : 

"Colonel Miles is at or near Harper's Ferry, as I understand, ■with nine thousand troopa. He 
can do aothino; where he is, but could be of great service if ordered to join me. I suggest tliat ho 
be ordered to join me by the most practicable route." 

Now let us considv what the result of the execution of this order would have 
been. Lee's instructions to Jackson, Longstreet, <&c., to move to the capture of 
Harper's Ferry, are dated the day previous, Sept. 9. An order to Colonel Miles " to 
join him by the most practicable route," as recommended by McOIellan, would, 
therefore, have simply brought his force into the arms of the rebel army, and Jackson 
would have been saVjCd the trouble of even the semblance of investment he thought 
proper to make of Hkrper's Ferry. In this state of facts General Halleck's reply of 
the same day to the dispatch of McCiellan is as sensible as could possibly have been 
given : 

" There is no way for Colonel Miles to join you at present \ his only chance is to defend his 
works till you can open communication with him." 

" Till you can open communication with him ;" but with a " pursuit" at the rate 
of six miles a day against an enemy moving at the rate of twenty, was there much 
chance to " open communication ?" Moreover, McCiellan lost the opportunity 
offered him of moving by the direct route to Harper's Ferry. Lee calculated that 
by threatening with his rear guard the passage into Pennsylvania he would draw 
McCiellan off from the flank march which was open to him to Harper's Ferry. In 
this calculation he was correct, and while he was engaged with a feeble detachment 
of the rebel force at South Mountain, the garrison at Harper's Ferry, 12,000 strong, 
with all its vast military stores, on the 14th fell into the hands of Jackson. As a 
military tribunal has pronounced judgment on this sad affair, there is no need of 
going into it here ; it is proper, however, to cite the conclusion of its finding, which 
is in the following terms: 

" The commission has fi-eely remarked on Colonel Miles, an old officer, who has been killed in 
the service of bis country, and it cannot from any motives of delicacy refrain from censuring those 
in high command, when it thinks such censure deserved. The Geaeral-in-Chief has testified that 
General McCiellan, after having received orders to repel the enemy invading the State of Mary- 
land, marched only six miles per day, on an average, wh^n pursuing this invading army. The 
General-in-Chief also testifies that in his opinion General McCiellan eould and shonld have re- 
lieved and proteated Harper'' s Ferry, and in this opinion the commission fully concur.'''' 

General McClellan's dispatches of this period, carefully suppressed by him from 
his "Report," show that from the first step he took out of Washington in pursuit of 
Lee, he was haunted by those horrible visions of the fabulous legions of the enemy 
that we have seen constantly oppressing him. While still at Rockville, under date 
of the 9th September, we find him writing : " From such information as can be ob- 
tained, Jackson and Longstreet have about a hundred and ten thousand, (110,000) 
men of all arms near Frederick, with some cavalry this side." 

The monstrosity of this estimate is readily apparent from the fact that even had 
the Corps of Jackson and Longstreet been at the full (40,000 men each) their united 
commands could only have numbered eighty thousand ; but it is perfectly well 
known that, after the series of severe actions through which they had gone, their 
' corps did not count one-half their complement. But General McCiellan was des- 
tined to go several thousand better on this estimate. Reversing the usual maxim 
that 

•' 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the vi^w, " 

the nearer McCiellan approached the enemy, the vaster his proportions grew. _ On 
the 11th we find him stating that "almost the entire rebel army in Virginia, 
amounting to not less than 120,000 men, is in the vicinity of Frederickecity ;" and 
a day or two afterward that army had resumed its old Chickahominy proportions 
of " 180,000 men!" Now with regard to Lee's army in Maryland, we have infor- 
mation more than usualiy precise respecting its strength. It all passed through 
Frederick city, where it was carefully counted, and where it was found to number, 
how many do you suppose? It was found to number precisely ^7?/iti/^i;e thousand 
I effective men, ! Remember, now, that McClellan's old Peninsular army, swelled in 



31 

'-^ Washington by a great part of the command of Pope, nambered at this time over a 
hwndred and twenty thousand men — that is, that McClellan's force outnumbered the 
enemy's more than two to one — and you will have the proper test by which to jiadg* 
of his generalship in the actions -which followed, 

The rear guard left by Lee at South Mountain fully succeeded in delaying the ad' 
• vance of Mcblellan until such time as Jackson and Hill had compelled the surrender of 
' Harper's Ferry and the capitulation of the garrison. But even after arriving before 
Antietam Creek he had still an opportunity on the 16th of September — the day be- 
fore the battle — to strike Lee before Jackson returned. This opportuuit}', also, he 
threw away. Says an English military critic, who always deals tenderly with 
McClellan : "Examining the proceeding.-> of the 16th of September, by the account 
most favorable to the Federal leader, there can be no doubt that the extreme cau- 
tion which he then displayed caused hitn to throw away the opportunity of crash- 
ing the enemy, which the resistance of Harper's Ferry, brief though it was, placed 
before him." 

Durii.g that night Jackson arrived with his corps, and the next day, September 
iTth, Tivhen the movement of Hooker drove McClellan into battle. Lee had his whole 
force massed at Antietam. But his whole force was doubly outnumbered by that 
of McClellan. The battle was delivered without order or ensemble — the attacks 
being made feebly and in driblets. Says General Sumner, in regard to the manner 
of conducting the battle of Antietam : 

" I have always believed that, instead of sending these troops into that action in driblets as they 
were sent, if General McClellan had authorized me to march these 40,000 men on ihe led flank o 
the enemy, we coulit not have failed to ihrow them right back in front of the otlier divisions o 
"oar army on our left — Burnside's, Franklin's, and Porter's corps. As it was, we went in, division 
after division, until even one of my own diyisions was forced out, the other two drove the enemy 
and held their positions. My intention was lo hSve proceeded entirely on by tlielr left and movo 
down, bringing ihem right in front of Burnside, H'rankiin and Porter. 

Question. And all escape for the enemy would have been impossible? 

Answer. I think so.'* 

On the night of the 18th the enemy, abandoned their position, their ammunition 
being exhausted, and returned across the Potomac into Virginia, without molestation. 
McClellan slowly followed and took up a position along the Potomac, on the Mary- 
land side. Lee established himself at the mouth of the valley, just south of Har- 
per's Ferry. ^ 

If any combination of circumstances can be conceived calculated to prompt a gen- 
eral to energetic preparations to reti-ieve his tarnished laurels, it was such an ex- 
perience as General McClellen had passed through. The campaign toward Richmond, 
' Hndertakfu on his favorite line and began with loud promises of the speedy annihi- 
lation of the enemy, .had ended in that enemy's assuming the initiative, invading 
the territory of the loyal States and compelling McClellan's hasty retreat to cover 
the capital. The country, which had lavished its resources to furnish that General 
with an incomparable army, felt the piofoundest humiliation and mortiticatioB 
at the disastrous disafJpointment of its just expectations, and after Lee's retreat' be* 
gan to look anxiously for a blow to be struck that would retrieve the national 
honor. Antietam having been fought about the middle of September, there was 
a prospect of a season of a couple of months, during which the state of the roade 
and the Wtather would favor military operations, and ene would suppose tha*, 
he would eagerly avail himself of this opportunity to strike a blow. As usual 
■ with him he was during this period constantly promising to do so. On the 2Yth he 
wrote to General Halleck : " When the river rises so that the enemy cannot 
cross in force, I purpose concentrating the army somewhere near Hai [ler's Ferry 
and then moving," etc Well, shortly after, this condition was fulfilled, and still 
he remained inactive. The burden of all his communications of this period was for 
more men, andstill more men, though he had now under his commatid an army 150,000 
strong. On the 6th of October he was peremptorily ordered to "cross the Potomac and 
give battle to the enemy, or drive him South. Your army must ri.ove now while 
the roads are good." Week after week passed without the order being obeyed. — 
To cover up his disobedience he has much to say in his Report of the deficiency of 
the army in sh< es, clothing, etc.; but the hollowness of this pretense is fully dis- 
played in the- letters of General Meigs and Halleck, and even by his own chief 
quartermaster. General Ingalls. Besides, even if there were slight deficiencies in 
. wiis respect, as there will be in every armj, (though no army in the world was ever 
eapplied as McClellan's was,) it would still have been better for him to have moved 
with this drawback than, by waiting to supply the deficit, to thiow the time of 
iooyinj< over to the bad season. Said a corps commander in his army to the writer, 

* S»port on the Ceuduct of Um War, vol, 1, p. Ml. 



32 » 

«Wi the rainy November morning when the movement finally began, «• We could 
better have advanced in September or October with the army barefoot than wiftcan 

now perfectly supplied 1 " 

After nearly two months delay, General McClellan was pried from his base by an 
imperative order, just as he had been pried out of Washington by the like means in 
the preceding April, and he began his forward movement by the inner line, east of 
the Blue Ridge. But it soon became evident from the slowness of his movements, 
the spirit in which he acted, and the complications into which he had plunged 
himself with the military authorities at Washington, that no good results could be 
expected from his campaign. He was accordingly ordered to resign command pf 
$he army at Warrenton, on the 5fch of November. 

, Thus closes a career certainly among the most extraordinary on record, and not 
less extraordinary from the record General McOellanhas given of it to the world in 
the Report which has formed the subject-matter of this critique. But it is not yet 
possible for any man to follow out in the complex web of historic cause and effect 
all the results that have come, and may yet come, from that career. These results 
are more and other than military, and they did not cease when his military career 
closed. If, having failed as a military commander, he had left us merely the legacy 
of disaster we inherited from him, if we had been only destined to find that tlie 
man we had chosen for a leader in the dread ordeal into which the nation was 
plunged by the war was a mere blunderer and incompetent, we might curse our 
folly and thank heaven for having raised up other men to fight our battles. But he 
left us another heritage than that of military calamities. He darkened men's minds, 
and paraljzed their arms, with doubts and fears. The nation had put forth its 
strength lavishly only to see it wasted^, but we could have borne this, had not the 
very springs of confidence been sapped by the charge that all this waste, these dis- 
asters, were due to the incompetence and malevolence of the Administration. While 
still in command, MeClellan lent the weight of his endorsement to the rising spiiit'of 
faction which sought to throw all the blame of his failures upon an Administration 
which the people were taught to believe had by its influence baulked all his bril- 
liant plans, and withheld the material needed to their execution. On being removed 
from command. McClellan put these slanders formally* on ..record in his so-called 
Report. He has ended by becoming the leader of a party which going on the effect 
produced by these vilifications of the Administration, seek^ to obtain control of tho 
destinies of this nation. I have attempted to expose the falsity of these charges, 
if not with the expectation of silencing the clamor of men seeking their greatness in 
their country's ruin, at least with the hope of disabusing honest men of mistaken 
notions long assiduously inculcated, and anticipating for ,the military conduct of 
Mr. Lincoln's Administration a part of that justice which history will accord it. 



